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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

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BA5r AND VE3T 

THt DI3C0Vei\Y OP AMERICA 

AND OTHeR POefl^ 5Y 
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THOMTO Y CROWeLL AND COMPANY 

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Copyright, 1893, 
By T. Y. CROWELL & CO. 



Wortooolr ^xt&s : 

J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith. 
Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



Each solemn sweet truth 

Is indited to thee, 
Dear playmate of youth, 

Who a-perch on my knee 
Heard me proudly rehearse — 

With a kiss for a dash — 
From my first callow verse ; — 

Heard the far billows plash 
To our nest in the East, 

Where we learned from the doves 
How to chant, like a priest, 

At the shrine of our loves. 

Each dainty light thought 

I have written for thee, 
O little one brought 

Like a pearl from the sea ; 
Who lay in a basket 

Rose-blown to the South, 
While rhymes in a casket 

Were caught from thy mouth. 
Should after-years query, 

My laurel of fame 
Shall rest with thee, dearie. 

Who bearest my name. 



J 



PREFACE. 



In "East and West" I have endeavored to condense 
my experiences of two hemispheres, and my study of their 
history. The synthesis of two continental civilizations, 
matured apart through fifteen hundred years, will mark 
this close of our century as an unique dramatic epoch in 
human affairs. At the end of a great cycle the two halves 
of the world come together for the final creation of man. 

This union was foreshadowed two thousand years ago 
in the swift career of Alexander the Great, when, at a 
blow, he brought the arts of Greece face to face with the 
mystical thought of India. In the Hellenic kingdoms the 
ancient types of East and West were mingled to the point 
of a vital exchange of faculty. But, with the decrepi- 
tude of the Roman Empire, Europe and Asia, bearing in 
their bosoms this pledge of plighted troth, withdrew into 
that long seclusion the barriers of which should not be 
broken until the might of invention could go hand in hand 
with sympathy. 

Eastern culture, slowly elaborated, has held to ideals 
whose refinement seems markedly feminine. For it social 



vi PREFACE. 

institutions are the positive harmonies of a life of brother- 
hood. Western culture, on the contrary, has held to ideals 
whose strength seems markedly masculine. For it law is 
the compromise of Liberty with her own excesses, while 
conquest, science, and industry are but parallel channels for 
the overflow of hungry personality. 

But this one-sidedness has been partly compensated by 
the religious life of each. The violence of the West has 
been softened by the feminine faith of love, renunciation, 
obedience, salvation from without. It is the very imper- 
sonality of her great ecclesiastical institute which offers to 
man a refuge from self. On the other hand, the peaceful 
impotence of the East has been spurred by her martial 
faith of spiritual knighthood, self-reliance, salvation from 
within. The intense individuality of her esoteric discipline 
upholds the fertile tranquillity of her surface. This stupen- 
dous double antithesis seems to me the most significant fact 
in all history. The future union of the types may thus be 
symbolized as a twofold marriage. 

Meanwhile the first attempts to assimilate alien ideals 
have led to the irony of a quadruple confusion, analogous 
to the disruption of Alexander's conquest. But our genuine 
interest in music predicts our native power to compass a 
profounder integration. Within the coming century the 
blended strength of Scientific Analysis and Spiritual Wis- 
dom should wed for eternity the blended grace of ^Esthetic 
Synthesis and Spiritual Love. 

In "The Discovery of America" I was governed by two 
aims : one, to expand the resources of poetic art by the 



PREFACE. vii 

inspiring analogies of music; the other, to exhibit the 
steadfast ideaUsm of Columbus as the medium through 
which overshadowing Spirit achieved its sublime purpose 
of uniting the East and the West. To-day his triumphant 
caravels have met the ambassadors of Xipangu on the shores 
of Lake Michigan. 

Steadfast as he, I cling to the faith that a frank recognition 
of the great, illuminating, spiritual verities, realized by the 
vivid flash of the imagination, is, and has been always, in art 
the only profound realism. 

ERNEST FRANCISCO FENOLLOSA. 
BOSTON, October 15, 1893, 



CONTENTS. 



EAST AND WEST. 

Part I. The First Meeting of East and West 



Part II. The Separated East .... 

Part III. The Separated West .... 

Part IV. The Present Meeting of East and West 

Part V. The Future Union of East and West . 



PAGE 

3 

29 

39 
48 



MINOR POEMS. 

Pastoral 

December 

The Hour 

Requiem 

The Dryad 

On Opening an Album 

The Soul Questions 

The Golden Age . 

The Snowdrop 

Love's Youth 

Sonnet: My Perfect Truth 

Sonnet: My Sacrifice 

Sonnet: Fuji at Sunrise 
ix 



59 
60 
61 
62 

63 
64 
66 
68 

71 

72 

74 
75 
76 



X CONTENTS. 

MINOR POEMS — continued. 

PACK 

Sonnet: Her Love 77 

Reproach 78 

The Wood-dove 81 

September 83 

New Year's Eve, 1875 85 

God's Forests 90 

Love and Music 95 

At Her Tomb 98 

Telepathy 100 

Reverie 103 

In the Aura 105 

Song of the Wind 107 

The Captive . .112 

Karma 114 

Maya 117 

Maytime 122 

With Death 125 

Spring Breath 128 

In Norway 130 

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. A Symphonic Poem. 

First Movement: The Sea and the Sky . 137 

Second Movement: Dreams 151 

Third Movement: Wedding Music . . . .169 

Fourth Movement: Triumph 185 



EAST AND WEST 

A POEM DELIVERED BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA 

SOCIETY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

JUNE JO, l8g2 



EAST AND WEST. 

PART I. 
dTfje iFtrst MttiiriQ d lEast anti West. 

Yet once again discordant trumpets blare 
To mar the music of the hemispheres. 

So heard the ancient world a cry of doom, 
Of agony which blossomed into prayer, 
And saw the laden treasuries of years 
Spilled on the flaming altar of her tomb. 

Fragrant the memory of Arcadian flutes, 
And shepherds' dance in groves whose Orphic lutes 
Flood space with tune ; of Jove's Olympian plains 
Where strive earth's naked gods ; and gilded fanes 
Carving warm outline from Corinthian skies ; 
Or cool Castalian depths where mystery hes ; 
Or the broad terraces of Parthenon 
Crowned with the sunflash from the virgin's shield, 
Whose proud chivalric bloom of Attic field 
In dance of throbbing marbles surges on 
3 



EAST AND WEST. 

As Phidias dreamed, that prince of centuries 
On his immortal throne, AcropoUs. 

And aromatic music yet distils 
In languid drops through soil of Indian lore. 
Echoes which cHng like moss to temple floor : — 
The tinkhng bell of Aryan upland kine 
Calling to prayer the herdsman, nature's priest; 
And that great martial pageant of the East 
Where Krishna preached of peace ; and palaces 
Of Sakyan kings upon a hundred hills 
Fringing the skirts of Ganges — sacred foam 
Wherein the Brahmin bathes — till Ocean's brine 
Swallows her floods of prayer ; the rock-hewn dome 
Hung with blue veils of incense, and gray stones 
Where weeping saints lay the last Buddha's bones. 

Perchance these two sweet songs took soul and shape 
One evening when the low sun held his breath, 
And Nature, pausing as at thought of death. 
Played with her folded canopy of crepe. 
Then the delirious waves which flood the halls 
Of Time subsided ; and, with vision clear. 
Floating as in a crystal atmosphere. 
Two winged spirits spake at intervals : — 

" Mark how the shuttles of the falling stars 
Weave golden fabrics on the warp of earth ! 
How their soft patterns swing 



EAST AND WEST. 5 

Like birds upon the wing ; — 

Of our fair faces mirrors, as a brook 

Wherein two lovers look ! 

How plastic universes wax and wane, 

Tangles of Brahma's skein, 

Where rainbow thoughts come flushing to the birth, 

And the pale gold of Venus melts in the blaze of Mars ! " 

" Spirit of Beauty, see 

Thy crown transferred to me. 

The heritage of Western orbs which sink 

Beyond Olympus' brink ; — 

Through the long night which shuts upon the world 

A downy seedhng curled 

In thy rich soil thick sown with shattered gods ; 

But as a pale white blossom 

Nursed in the fragrant moisture of this bosom, 

From which again shall start 

The tender shoots of Art, 

Fresh fronds of perfect curve like ends of tunes, 

And groves of graceful palms to fleck our sods 

With the long shadows of the Eastern moons." 

" Soul of the East, I kneel 

Thine inmost mood to feel. 

Heart, as of woman, wet 

With the first dews of nature's morning dream, 

Here on this cold hard brow in mercy set 

Thy sacred touch, and break 



EAST AND WEST. 

This chain of sparkHng jewels which I deem 

A bond upon my soul ; and in thy lake 

Of childhke self-unfolding consciousness 

Baptize my soul with floods of sweet distress. 

Show me reflected shades of sacrifice, 

And opal tints of pity, and cloud forms 

Of unimagined aspiration piled 

Against the enamelled blue of earthly aim, 

And powers without a name 

Which the calm pilot of the soul enjoys 

When in salt wash of seething currents wild 

He steers new worlds through elemental storms." 

" So may our spirits for a moment float 

As in a new-built boat ; 

Clasping each other 

With the warm love of sister and of brother, 

Breathing fresh life together 

From every blast of Jove-distracted weather. 

For now the future glows 

With the rich promise of Aurora's bows. 

Now we can see all sin 

And pain but as the flesh we struggle in ; 

Let perish pleasure's sloth. 

And cherish pangs of growth. 

And folding hands in prayer 

Welcome the futile tortures of despair : — 

For the great plan of universal Law 

We gaze upon with awe. 



EAST AND WEST. 7 

Yet is the moment done. 

Black is the buried sun. 

One kiss before we part, 

And in the hurried mingling of our breath 

Transmit the seed that shall not suffer death; 

In tear-wet patience of a lonely heart 

Each in his separate soil 

To plant and water with long ages' toil; 

Until again perhaps 

Thousands of years shall lapse, 

And in some second focus of God's will. 

When the long night of cataclysm ceases 

And worn-out worlds have torn themselves in pieces, 

In some sweet dawn which dissipates that ill 

We shall bring forth the pure and ripened flower 

Conceived in this sweet hour. 

"Yet now harsh horns begin 

To rasp in din. 

And all the world grows black 

With gathering shadows of the coming wrack. 

Away ! Farewell ! 

And now unleash the murderous hounds of hell ! " 



Reclining on his roof in Macedon, 

The youthful Alexander 

Heard a loud cry, and from the Eastern ocean 

Saw cloud-shapes leap like warriors in commotion. 



EAST AND WEST. 

And lightning shafts hurled swift as bolts of battle, 
And scouts of flying scud which hurried on 
The rising tumult of the thunder's rattle. 
And in the bosom of the young commander 
A flame leaped up, as if a star had broken 
And in a molten mass its contents poured 
Through the dilating chambers of his heart; 
While, Fate's grim message eager to impart. 
Quick hissing in his ears Ambition roared : — 

" Darling of destiny ! prince of the ages ! 

Jove-dowered paragon ! nursling of sages ! 

Sword of the universe ! moulder of races ! 

Welder of hemispheres ! forger of spaces ! 
Rise, O arise, for they fight in the skies, 
And the chargers of demons have blood in their eyes. 
And the captains of light, and the cohorts of shades 
Are pricking the kings of the world with their blades 
To yield thee the wealth of their crowns as a prize ! " 

Thus was the signal of the furies spoken. 



At Issus, after fateful Granicus, 

In rival lines paused Greek and Persian hosts. 

But high in upper strata of the air. 

Tossing in wild disorder, mutinous. 

Like the torn fringes of a Typhon's hair. 

Lay two o'ershadowing armaments of ghosts. 

Mighty contingents from all unseen spheres. 



EAST AND WEST. 

The morning sun lit up their ranks of spears 
With myriad flashes, like magnetic glances 
Shot from arched forests of auroral lances. 
But their tumultuous rings were held in curb 
By two archangels, arrogant, superb. 
Fierce spirits of the elemental fire 
Who sped on eager wing at Jove's desire 
Down from the parching dust of Martian fields 
To plan fresh woes for this distracted ball; 
Calm, cruel, dread with gorgon-headed shields 
Forged in the sun, and fresh Hephaestian mail. 
Waved each a falchion like a comet's tail 
Threatening extinction to a million stars. 
And now against the drum-head of the moon 
Shivered a lightning bolt; and all hell shook. 
While the supreme recorder in his book 
A new page marred with blood; and like a wall 
Smitten with earthquake fell the impatient bars, 
Whence, snorting trumpet blasts, a mad platoon 
Of rampant elephants rushed forth, and raged 
Down that black plain of cloud like winds uncaged; 
As Alpine peaks had avalanches hurled 
Down the besplintered pathway of their rock; — 
With liquid leaps, as some great torrent runs 
Bursting the futile barrier of its dam. 
And oscillating like a drunken world. 

But lined in solid ranks to meet the shock 
Knelt calm ten thousand archers, who at once 



10 EAST AND WEST. 

Bent their great bows as bamboo forests bend 

When off the Yellow Sea beats the simoom. 

Earth heard their loosened cords like crack of doom, 

Or the last crash of some mad orchestra. 

And a low cloud of hissing serpents sped 

Stinging like fire-fed eels from Surinam; 

Till those great mammoths fell and writhed in pain, 

Tearing each other's flesh, as tigers rend 

The bones of sheep. And now the gilded car 

Of each archangel moved; the ominous tread 

Of myriad chargers sounded on their flanks; 

And gathering lines of mounted furies whirled 

Down either side, and tore through broken ranks 

As spring-fed torrents tear through rock-choked passes, 

Sweeping away, like cyclones, struggling masses; 

Till in the centre of that blood-streaked plain 

They met as mountains meet, when Titans cast 

Pelion on Ossa, and their fragments spurt 

Through startled space a jet of asteroids. 

And now the red demonic masses seething 
In the wild vortex of those awful voids 
Felt the strained strata of the atmospheres 
Cracking beneath them; and, as polar bears 
Slipping on toppling icebergs when the spring 
Loosens the Greenland crust in Baffin's Bay, 
They reeled, and through that crumbling crater passed 
As towns melt up in earthquakes, like the spray 
Of salt seas hissing through earth's molten heart. 



EAST AND WEST. 11 

Not like the falling Satan dazed, inert, 
Impotent, cursing like a baffled king; 
But as a blood-red dragon active, breathing 
Mephitic tongues of flame, with teeth like swords 
To reap glad harvests of barbarian hordes; — 
So on the pygmy heads of Persian hosts 
Thundered this dread Niagara of ghosts. 

But now the Greeks like a long fire-tipped dart 
Burst frontward in. And Alexander shrieked 
To frenzy wrought by hell's unclaimed alliance. 
And the shrill whistle of his hot defiance 
Pierced, with the meteor-flashing of his blade. 
Straight to Darius' heart; who turned dismayed 
Into the maddened flight of plunging horses 
Trampling to crimson froth their slippery courses. 
As some proud orb, meeting magnetic bars 
Flashed from indomitable master stars. 
Pauses a moment, hesitant and piqued. 
Then with a shudder hurries retrograde 
Down the long reaches of the zodiac; — 
So did the Persian monarch on his track; 
So swirled behind the spray of rout and wrack, 
Like Tigris, flooding Babylonian plains 
With wreckage of undreamed catastrophe. 

And now the world lay at his feet. But he, 
Like some discarded engine of the gods. 
Smitten by rash excess of his own Mars, 



12 EAST AND WEST. 

Fell on the pathway of the continents. 

Not all the winged fates for which he fought, 

Not all the gorgeous gates of ancient reigns 

Submerged beneath his Macedonian sea 

Could grant him shelter. Yet those peaceful waves, 

Filling earth's golden cup from Chersonese 

To the wide crystal of Himalya's rim. 

Wearing strange channels for ^Egean seas 

Through Indus' mouth, — whence the returning tide 

Sweeps the vast spoil of oriental thought, — 

Lay on the pregnant bosom of those sods 

Through the long evening mists of centuries, 

The sunset chamber of the world's veiled bride; 

Where dull Seleucid crimson afterglows, 

Or the last purple arch of Parthian bows 

Blended rich blooms from continental graves : 

Lay in still depths of brooding elements 

Like ferns in dark organic soil of tombs, 

Whose slow gestating mystery of wombs 

Silent, unheralded, in twilight dim 

Moulded twin orbs for hovering cherubim. 

So had the spirits of the hemispheres 

Fore-planned the fruitful years. 

Ere nature's cyclic chills 

Should wrap their tender souls in separate ills. 

So the pure germ of art 
Washed from its native soil, 



EAST AND WEST. 13 

Warm with the last caress of Grecian toil, 

Nestled against the oriental heart; 

Mid the first kindling faith of Scythian plains 

Found tender incarnation 

In shoots of fresh creation 

Creeping like frost-blown flowers o'er Buddhist fanes. 

So, too, Imperial Rome, 

Smitten with pangs of unsuspected birth, 

By her new Eastern blade of conscience keen 

Stabbed in the secret chamber of her heart, 

Rent her gay robes of art. 

Levelled the stately marbles of her home : 

Then, with breast bared. 

And gray head bent to earth 

In the first ecstasy of suffering, 

Rushed to the desert like a guilty thing. 

And cast her weight of sin, so gladly shared, 

Upon the Mercy of the Nazarene. 

So shall we leave them there, 
Two worlds as if in prayer. 
In consecration kneeling, 
For one blest moment feeling 
That strife 
Is not true life. 
That perfect rest 
Is best. 



PART II. 

CJe Separat£tJ lEast. 

O SWEET dead artist and seer, O tender prophetic priest, 
Draw me aside the curtain that veils the heart of your East. 

wing of the Empress of mountains, 
Brood white o'er a world of surprises; 
And soar to thy Sun as she rises 

From the mazarine arch of her fountains. 

For thine islands she dropped in the reeds 

As a girdle of emerald beads, 

And her rainbow promise of genius spanned 

As a bridge for the gods to their chosen land. 

And her last pure poet shall sing 

Like a farewell note 

From a nightingale's throat 

Of her peace, through thy roseate window of Spring. 

1 saw him last in the solemn grove 
Where the orange temples of Kasuga shine. 
Feeding the timorous deer that rove 
Through her tall, dark, purple pillars of pine, 
And marking the pattern of leaves 

14 



EAST AND WEST. 15 

Which the golden mesh of the willow weaves 

On the olive bed of her moss-grown eaves. 

And I cried to my painter-sage, 

" O spirit lone of a bygone age, 

Smiling mid ruin and change, 

With faith in the beautiful soul of things, 

I would gaze on the jewels thy vision brings 

From the calm interior depths of its range. 

For I 've flown from my West 

Like a desolate bird from a broken nest 

To learn thy secret of joy and rest. 

Quaff from thy fancy's chalice. 

And build me anew the fairy palace 

With arches gilded and ceiling pearled 

Where dwells the soul of thine Asian world." 

Then I thought that his smile grew finer, 
As if touched with an insight diviner; 
Dear Hogai, my master. 
Perched on a wild wistaria stem. 
And I marked the light on his mantle's hem 
Of a halo pure as a purple aster. 
And the cold green blades of a bamboo spear 
Pierced to his hand through the atmosphere. 
Like the note of a silver bell to the ear. 
And his voice came soft as the hymn 
Which the snow-clad virgins in cloister dim 
Were chanting, with rhythmical sway of limb. 



16 EAST AND WEST. 

"The past is the seed in the heart of a rose 

Whose petalled present shall fade as it blows. 

The past is the seed in the soul of man, 

The infinite Now of the spirit's span. 

For flesh is a flower 

That blooms for an hour; 

And the soul is the seed 

Which determines the breed, 

The past in the present 

For monarch or peasant. 

Eye to eye 

'T is ourselves we spy; 

For doom or grace 

One manifold face; 

Life's triumphs and errors 

In self-resurrections, 

Like endless reflections 

From parallel mirrors. 

" Now I speed on a charger of wind 
To the snow-capped castles of Ind. 
Mid statues of Buddha the meek. 
Link between Mongol and Greek, 
Kanishka haughty and lone 
Here lolled on his sculptured throne, 
The great Vasubandhu to mark, 
Lion-faced patriarch. 
Now moss like a pall 
Shrouds the ruined wall; 



EAST AND WEST. 17 

Afar in the desert the tigers call. 

One pilgrim alone 

From its sandy bed 

Is lifting a beautiful Buddha's head. 

'O take me, loved of the dragon throne, 

Back to thy pious imperial prince ; 

For ages and ages since 

'T was I who carved that form 

From the limestone warm. 

I '11 show thee where germinate in the soil 

A thousand truncated gods for thy spoil. 

Gather these Bodhisats, 

And battle-scarred features of grim Arhats, 

And arrogant alabaster kings 

With eyes of jacinth 

Dethroned from their plinth. 

And the masterful heads of Scythian knights 

Scowling in mortal fights 

With misshapen elemental things. 

And hurry thy laden ship 

On a heaven-blessed homeward trip ; — 

So shall the Northern and Eastern plains 

Clap their hands at thy gains. 

For the light of unborn states 

From these things radiates; 

Blood for solution 

Of crystal worlds Confucian; 

Stars for the final Asian man 

Rising in far Japan. 



18 EAST AND WEST, 

I '11 paint on the wall 

Of thy Tartar capital 

Blue gods unmoved in everlasting flame, 

Vast planetary coils without a name, 

Invigorating thrills 

From unseen wills. 

And spurred by these I shall cast 

Black bronze in an infinite mould, 

As high as a pine 

And as fine 

As the patient jeweller carves his gold; 

Impersonal types which shall last 

As the noblest ideals of the Past. ' 



"O crystalline flash at the bar of billows! 
O amethyst gate of the Eastern seas ! 
O balmy bosom of soft spring willows ! 
O pearly vision of white plum trees ! 

" O blest Hangchow, I fly to thee now 
As a fluttering dove to her leafy home; 
As the seabirds sweep o'er the spray of the deep 
To the reedy fringe of Sientang's foam. 

" Now a mirror of pines thy soft lake shines 
By the dewy breath of the morning kissed. 
And the spouting rills like the blood of the hills 
Are drunk by the passionate lips of the mist. 



EAST AND WEST, 19 

" In a tangle of leaves with silken sleeves 
Thy poets sing on the terraced beach, 
Where the blue-flagged taverns with mossy eaves 
Are starred by the pink of the blossoming peach. 

"Thy ramparts rise with roofs to the skies 
Like a jewelled cluster of golden peaks. 
'Neath the crystal ridge of the arching bridge 
Is the dreamy shade which the boatman seeks. 

"While sunbeams play on the rock-hewn way 
To the dizzy heights of his temple's spire, 
Like a spirit roves in mountain groves 
The priestly painter with soul a-fire. 

" Nor frost of age shall the saintly sage 
Restrain from the balm of his walk at noon; 
Nor the hem of the night retard the flight 
Of the maiden who bares her breast to the moon. 

" In dainty dells where the silver bells 
Of far-off temples caress the breeze. 
Shall nature's child with her locks blown wild 
Her herbs let fall as she falls on her knees. 

"For visions come on the noontide hum 
Of soul in the infinite warmth of things, 
The mirror of moods where spirit broods 
With the glory of love on her half -grown wings. 



20 EAST AND WEST. 

''There knotted pines with their storm-torn lines 
Are stamped with the stress of a passion human; 
And the willow swims on its current of limbs 
Like the yielding heart of a queenly woman. 

"And mountains crossed by the track of the frost, 
And rocks that harden with weight of woes, 
And rivers that hide like a sweet, shy bride, 
And thorns which sting in the kiss of a rose, 

"And habits that twine in a clinging vine. 
And innocent herons in lotus beds. 
And water that showers the vernal flowers, 
Are the patterns of soul with its rainbow threads. 

"And a song of pity is rife in the city; 
And the marts of toil are a revel of mirth; 
And the passion of labor is help to a neighbor 
For the sake of the love God breathes on the earth. 

"Let the painter paint a world for a saint ! 
Let the poet sing of the realm of the heart ! 
Where the spur of duty is the passion for beauty 
There Love is a law, and the Law is an art. 

" O crystalline flash at the bar of billows, 
O tremulous secret the pine-trees hum ! 
There once was a life like the peace of thy willows, — 
But night shuts down, and my voice is dumb. 



EAST AND WEST. 21 

" Farewell to the dawn in the meado^ ! 
Farewell to the glint on the dew ! 
All hail to the wing of the shadow, 
And a kiss for the curse of the new ! 
'T is the flight of the wild goose graven 
On the pale green gold of the West; 
And I wake to the call of the raven. 
Let me sing to the land of my rest ! 

" O land where the towns are like garden blooms ! 
O land where the maids are like peaches ! 
O gardens faint with their own perfumes ! 
O maidens like waves on the beaches ! 
O erratic child Japanese ! 
Heir of Mongolian peace, 
Though we know not thy fate hereafter, 
Thank God for thy genuine laughter. 
Bathe in the passing mood of thy mirth 
As in sunlit ether the earth; 
Like the plunging bow of a ship 
In the pools of thy faith still dip; 
And freshen the Asian ideal 
In the cooling floods of the real. 

" Not for sages only 
Or hermits lonely 
Blows the bud of truth; 
But for innocent youth. 
Hearts that smile 
With no shadow of guile. 



22 EAST AND WEST. 

Let pink-veined pleasure bloom ! 

Bliss 

Like the kiss 

Of a summer air, 

Roving it knows not where, 

Blessing it cares not whom ! 

Words 

Like the glad good morning of the birds; 

Loves 

Like the coo of doves; 

Soft whispers 

As of fair nuns at vespers; 

Airs 

Pure as a child's first prayers! 

Let us dance 

To the moon 

In a ring of wild flowers ! 

In a trance 

Let us swoon 

On the lap of the hours ! 

Let us fly 

Like a lark to the sky ! 

Let us graze 

Like a dove-eyed fawn 

On the purple pastures of haze ! 

Let us leap on the gem-starred lawn 

Of the virginal dawn ! 

Let us gaze 

In a pool 



EAST AND WEST. QZ 

In the heart of a dell 

Shady and cool; 

On the film of that well 

See unexpected 

Beauty reflected, 

The world of art 

Like a thing apart; — 

Ripples of notes 

From wild birds throats, 

Blurred outlines 

Of the shimmer of pines, 

Tangled masses 

Of dew-soaked grasses, 

Faint perfumes 

From the mirrored blooms ! 

This is thy mission, 

O child of transition. 

To illumine the gloomy pages 

Of later ages. 

Retain simplicity 

Even to eccentricity. 

Prize individuality 

As man's divinest quality, 

The spontaneity 

Of Deity! 

Teach them the music fine 

In the curve of a perfect line; 

Teach them to water their art 

With the blood of the heart! 



24 EAST AND WEST. 

" O happy children of blest Japan, 
Relics of elemental man 
Before souls wilt 

In the parching consciousness of guilt ! 
Dance to the tune of thy flutes, 
Or weep at thy pathos of lutes; 
Gather like laughing stars 
Round the course of thy festal cars; 
Light the smoking torch 
O'er the flower-bed in thy porch; 
Hang evergreen 

On the gate at New Year's e'en; 
Love storks and deer 
And all things significant and queer; 
Wine cups of buds like myrtles, 
And the hairy tails of turtles, 
Pigeons feasting on temple crumbs. 
The explosive eloquence of plums; 
Crowds picnicking merry 
In snowy vistas of cherry, 
Where perfumed avalanches 
Slip from the laden branches; 
Leap of the carp 
To strike the wistaria's harp. 
Garlands to deck the brow 
Of the marble cow; 
The pleasant croon 
Of far secluded priests at noon 
Gliding o'er lacquered floors, 



EAST AND WEST. 25 

Pacing long lines of orange corridors, 

Where the dim gold Buddh of the altars 

Nods to the hum of their psalters! 

In the very incense smoke 

Consecrate thy harmless joke; 

Banter of paradoxes, 

Folk-lore of badgers and foxes; 

Fathers of families 

Preaching droll homilies; 

Children in merry hosts 

Frightened by masks of ghosts, 

Toasting rice-cakes on winter nights, 

Battling with saw-stringed kites. 

Sisters and brothers 

Basking like kittens in the love of their mothers ! 

" O mother heart, pierced with keen 
Anxieties that banish sleep 
For sons who rove on the deep. 
Pray to the holy snow-white Queen, 
Spirit of Providence, 
Choosing her throne 
On the cold gray stone. 
In love intense 
Sweeping with inner sense 
O'er miles of watery waste, 
Rushing in haste 

Where cold billows lift monstrous lips 
To suck in blasted hulls of ships ! 



26 EAST AND WEST. 

Pray for the golden peace 

Of the Buddha of Infinite Light ! 

Let the importunity cease 

Of the Self who knocks in the night ! 

Make thy choice 

Of the low inarticulate voice ! 

Save the man at thy breast 

Who screams 

At the sting of the gold in his dreams, 

The unholy strife of the West! " 



O wing of the Empress of mountains ! 

So sang thy last poet at Kasuga's fountains. 

The chant of the vestals had ceased. 

The moon was awake in the East. 

The love-locked pine-branches o'er us 

Tinkled their bells in sympathetic chorus; 

And the willow wept 

Where the violet smiled as she slept. 

My heart too was swelling 

With the tears of a love past telling. 

But I said : — 

" O blossom of life in a dew-starred bed, 

Thou art too sweet for this earth. 

Too exquisite to linger; 

Like the peace of a blest babe who dies at birth. 

Like the agony of tears 



EAST AND WEST. - 27 

When the young mother robbed of its prayed-for 

years 
Kisses the listless finger. 
Say, on the feminine curves of thy plain 
Rises no rock for a counter-strain? 
Are there no trumpets to shriek 
In the sleeping ear of the meek? 
No comet to threaten the sun?" 
Yes, there was one ; — 

One priest white-robed who seemed to glide 
Like a ghost from the rock at my side, 
With a smile that pierced like a sword 
And a soul-compelling word. 
And I heard him say, 
As we fell on our knees to pray : — 

" The fire of combat flashes 

'Neath the grass-grown slopes of the ashes. 

The planets are held in their places 

By the struggles of mighty races. 

Choice souls have forever come 

To be trained for their martyrdom 

Since the days when Kukai hurled 

His dart from the Chinese world. 

What can the dreaming people know 

Of the tempest surging below. 

Of the devils storming the very 

Fort of the monastery ? 

He who would strangle an elf 



28 EAST AND WEST. 

Must first of all conquer himself ; 

The true knight 

With his own heart fight, 

Antagony 

Of untold agony ! 

On no external god relying, 

Self-armed, heaven and hell alike defying, 

Lonely, 

With bare will only, 

Biting his bitter blood-stained sod; — 

This for the world, as for Japan, 

This is to be a man ! 

This is to be a god ! " 



PART III. 
m^t Separateti TOest, 

Soul of my inner face, face of my race, 

Strong mask of self-assertion, positive, 

Firm lip of competition, masculine. 

Broad brow of Mercury, quick, cunning, keen, 

Fierce eye of Mars with crest of sunlit fringe ! 

Through nights of Time I mark thy luminous course. 

Furrowing rich worlds with prow piratical, 

Grafting new shoots on broken racial stems. 

Sowing old soils fresh fertilized with blood. 

Thou art the sieve of men, whence weaker bulks 

Slip through the meshes to oblivion. 

Breathe through my blood once more thy feverish glow, 

Long chilled by cooling crusts of compromise ; 

Thou, strong in reciprocity of needs. 

Expansive self-willed personality ! 

Standing upon the vantage-ground of peaks 
Kissed by the hght of rising Easter dawns, 
I mark long lines of shadows surge like ghosts 
Waging with noiseless shout their mimic war. 

29 



30 EAST AND WEST. 

As some vast wave o'ertopping lunar tides, 
Engendered at the bottom of the sea 
By stifled monsters wrenched, whose fissured mouths 
Feed on her protoplasmic gelatines. 
Sweeps on with circling rim, like living discs 
Of light from stars long centuries extinct, 
Slipping from pole to pole as if a hand 
Caressed the tiny surface of this ball ; — 
So from dark mouths of prehistoric woods 
Which once had reared their gloomy palisades 
To hail the slow retreat of baffled ice. 
Issue chill floods of melting Northern snows, 
A wild Teutonic wave of glacial steel 
Submerging Roman worlds ; with surge of spray 
Mocking the lonely sentinels of Alps, 
Cresting the faithful bar of Apennines, 
Storming the portals of the Pyrenees, 
Tainting the sunlit laughter of the Rhine 
With eddying crimson shrieks of tortured hearts ; — 
A flood of human fiends, by furies driven 
To quaff the wine of life from lipless skulls. 
And doom for slaves fair weeping captive maids 
In marts of their own marble palaces. 

Now shot from polar coasts see meteors flash. 
Long lines of viking ships, with low black hulls 
Like vultures, plunging through the Northern seas, 
Hovering like gulls in track of channel storms, 
Scouring for prey the long white sunUt cliffs ; 



EAST AND WEST. 31 

Wailing their chant to Odin Uke wild winds 

Surging through organ pipes of naked fiords, 

Wooing Valhalla to Northumbrian hills 

Or primrose-garnished banks of lovely Seine. 

Now, drunk with richer wine of vanquished worlds, 

Wielding the cross as once their bolt of Thor, 

They skirt with gorgeous sweep Hispania's curves. 

Through pillared gateway of the land-locked sea 

Set in its rifted coasts of gilded cloud, 

A blue enamelled dragon ! Now they break. 

Those strange Norse champions of a Hebrew god, 

The threatening onsets of the Saracen, 

Dispersed like storms which strew with wrecks thy coast. 

Nurse of a hundred races, Sicily ! 

Whether in corpse-choked pass at Roncesvalles, 
Second Thermopylae of Paladins ; 
Or in the vortex of Valkyrian joy 
Welcoming Hastings' maddest hail of spears ; 
Anon in flaming wrath of wild crusades 
Storming the hoary walls of Constantine, 
Laying a clanging wreath of naked swords 
Upon the tombstone of the Prince of Peace ; 
Forging new thrones for kings pontifical, 
Wresting dominion from the polar ice. 
Filching the torrid spoil of Indian seas ; 
Columbus with his unaccustomed keels 
Piercing the void to worlds antipodal : — 
Whether it be, in song, Arthurian knights, 



32 EAST AND WEST. 

Or Siegfried battling with the wills of gods, 
Or weird still voices of the steel-clad maid ; 
Now the atomic flash of feudal war, 
Now the red arguments of Christian zeal ; 
Or where in gloomy dungeons of the soul 
Shrieks the self-torture of inquisitors ; 
Or where in glow of young creative faith 
Pure Gothic pinnacles like crystal darts 
Precipitate on films of firmament. 
Echoes of martial songs to melt in tears, 
Passions of hearts to palpitate in flowers. 
Fire-whorls to lap the altars of the moon : — 
There I accept my dower of Western blood 
Kneeling in sackcloth as a penitent 
To consecrate such power for worthier aim. 

What gave this world of turbulence its strength ? 
What its cement of bonds centripetal ? 
Was it blind crash of molecules supreme 
Compelling peace of equiUbrium ? 
Tangles of selves in planetary coils 
Won from vast voids of human nebulae ? 
Force bearding force like John at Runnymede ? 
Rights torn like blasted profiles from the rock ? 
Self abdicating self for self s own aim ? 
Ah, Law, laugh loud at heaven's harmonic code, 
Then kneel to naked negativity ! 
Cromwell and Luther hail as champions, 
Not Him of Galilee thy guarantee ! 



EAST AND WEST. IZ 

O self-fed spring of thought, O eager lip 
Of scientific pride, thou too art stained 
With the ancestral curse; — analysis 
Splitting ideas in fine-spun silver threads 
Like the cold drip from icicles, impelled 
To wrest each numbered angle from the maze 
Of cosmic synthesis, all faiths and loves 
To solve in pools of fleshly impulses; 
Sweeping the sky with rival telescopes 
For paltry gold or crumbling stars of fame, 
Yet in the blindness of self-centred zeal 
Founding new plinths for shafts of spirit-worlds. 
Whether in wars where words like bolts are hurled 
From ramparts of scholastic fortresses. 
Or systems crashing from their Titan suns 
To fall in spray of blasted principle; 
Or gnomes who dig dark secrets from the earth, 
Or sylphs who mount the coursers of the clouds, 
Ariels who hail the shadow of the moon 
For cyclic chase of self -hid photospheres; 
Bees bearing message from the bursting buds. 
Adventurous birds, earth's floral pioneers. 
Or boys who cast away the wanton stone 
To marvel at the lithesome leap of life; 
Whether the faultless search that stifles pain. 
Or incarnating thought which lifts on high 
Vast airy webs of steel to span the floods. 
Rivets the ends of earth with breathing links, 
And laughs at space in telepathic speed; 



34 EAST AND WEST. 

Or be it libraries of bygone deeds 

Rescued from torch of time, or mysteries 

Of interracial flux, or desert wastes 

Of dry statistic covering fertile wells : — 

These be thy choicest blooms for offering 

Before the judges of Manwantaras, 

Thou, thirst unslaked of curiosity ! 

Thou, prying, piercing pygmy, unappalled 

Though hell launch forth anathemas, resolved 

To conquer facts as thou destroyest worlds ! 

Thou dauntless Norseman steering fragile barks 

Into the sunsets of Infinity ! 

Now on high noon of hot commercial tides 

See thy ripe products borne to Eastern spheres; 

Threatening the world with thy belligerent types. 

Threatening thyself with thine excess of zeal. 

The very lust and greed by which is spun 

The knitting tissue of these cruel wounds, 

The very curse which whips our naked crews 

To span the world with steel-bound leap of trade, 

Poison the crimson life-tide of our veins, 

Convene the dread tribunal of our doom. 

The smoke of chimneys taints this verdant world. 

The pests of crowded indigence and vice 

Are nigh to eat the manhood of thy heart. 

See'st thou the fuse of thine own dynamite? 

Self -law, self-science, self-greed, self -wealth, self -sworn 

To blast the stanchest stronghold of thy pride j 



EAST AND WEST. 35 

The West provokes the East. The iron arm 
Slips off the narrow edges of this world. 
Flaxen-haired vandals hunt for zest of blood 
The black striped tigers of the Bengalee, 
Scaling the slippery crests of Himavats, 
Holding the poisoned cup to Mongol lips. 
See in last glimpse how unchecked years condense 
The forces of destruction. — Miles of wall 
Gemmed like enamelled rainbows, gleam of lakes 
Shot through fair parks, whose lines of granite bridge 
Sweep like the sculptured drapery of a god; 
Cresting the hill a dream of jewelled tents 
Caught from the mirror of the sunset skies, 
Now crystallized in marble terraces. 
And gilded pillars, and the arch of roofs 
Bright with chromatic coronet of tiles, 
And endless treasures of green-hearted bronze, 
And blood-red urns, and rare canary sheens 
Flashed from a whispering sea of draperies; — 
The Summer Palace of the Dragon Throne 
Unmatched by all the wonders of the world; — 
Now lapped in flame, whose red remorseful lip 
Shrinks from the dread repast, pillars of smoke 
Bearing earth's funeral wail to weeping stars 
For the lost marvel of the centuries; — 
Like crumbling glow of Alexandria's tomes 
Or shattered fragments of the Parthenon ! 



36 EAST AND WEST. 

Ah night that falls 

In floods of twisted palls, 

Blot out this culminating crime of men; 

For far on high 

In yon polluted sky 

Meet the two spirits of the world again ; 

" Brother, for this 

Gave I my parting kiss? 

Is this the flower 

Nursed in thy bosom from that fateful hour? 

Two thousand years 

Wasted to drown the world in tears? 

Where is the gem 

Of broken-souled contrition. 

The victory of submission, 

I lent thee from my Eastern diadem? " 

Then spake the angel of the West, 

With tear-wet wings folded upon his breast : — 

" Sister, it is not lost. 

That flame of Pentecost. 

It burns 

In the still spirits of my chosen urns. 

What though through age-long nights of violence 

The masculinity intense 

Of races rude 

May desecrate its mood? 

I can reveal to thee another story 



EAST AND IVEST. 37 

Of apostolic glory; — 

Prayers that have curbed 

The brutal passion of a world disturbed, 

For wild despair the vent 

Of pity's sacrament, 

Love as a balm 

For torn and bleeding souls, 

As of a bell that tolls 

Notes of eternal calm ! 

Canst thou not feel 

The stricken millions kneel 

Clasping the bloody cross whereon He dies? 

Praying for torture keen, 

The crown of sacrifice 

Upon the cold brow of their Nazarene ? 

Hast thou not seen 

The tenderest human loves which Raphael paints, 

Transports of saints 

The angelic brother limned 

Kneeling in ecstasy with eyes tear-dimmed? 

Tears for that stricken mother-soul's baptism, 

Her coronation's chrism. 

The intrinsic, fertile, pure divinity 

Of Spirit-wrapped Virginity ! " 

" Yea, brother, thine the pain 
Of wounds not dealt in vain. 
Again, O plighted heart. 
We meet, no more to part. 



EAST AND WEST. 

For thee I 've kept 

These tender buds of art, 

For thee I 've wept 

O'er worlds that smiled like maidens as they slept. 

Now my reward supreme 

The manhood of thy dream ! 

"But there 's a deeper bliss 

We must not miss. 

Hear' St not the signal spreading 

News of a second secret wedding? 

Religious rites 

Of holy nuptial nights? 

Dost thou not hear it, 

Virginal wife of my spirit? 

I am indeed the spouse 

Shall lead thee to my house. 

O tender Christian love, 

tear-blest dove, 

1 am thy husband's eye, 
Through which thou shalt descry 
Planes of angelic power 
Reserved for thy last dower ! " 

" Hear, earth, our song, 

For thou art bidden 

To double nuptials hidden ! 

And thy confusion shall not last for long." 



PART IV. 

Efje Presmt JHeeting of 25agt ant» West. 

Let us mount ! let us mount ! 'T is the spur of the horn ! 

Let us leap like a lark in the face of the morn ! 

Let us vault over hedges or rank river-edges, 

And annihilate space in the rage of our race ! 

Come, prince, like a varlet bedeck thee in scarlet; 

Come, ply the great trade of this mad masquerade. 

Like a harlequin's prance or a dervish's dance! 

For we hunt, for we grope for the phantoms of hope. 

And we blow a wild kiss to the scoffing abyss; — 

Not for gold; — for we 're told that 's the curse of the 

bold! 
Not for love; — she 's a fool that we read of in school ! 
Then for fame ? — Not a bit ! It 's as hollow as wit ! 
But we hunt, and we hunt all the same. It 's a game ! 
It 's for madness of blood that we ride on the flood. 
And we would, if we could, leap the girdle 
Of the infinite sea like a hurdle ! 

O you West in the East like the slime of a beast. 
Why must you devour that exquisite flower? 
Why poison the peace of the far Japanese? 
Is there no one to tell of the birthright they sell ? 

39 



40 EAST AND WEST. 

Must they sweat at machines like a slave to the means, 

And murder the ends at the beck of false friends? 

As the heart of a cloud shall the meadow of Asia be 

ploughed 
By the curse of your fire, and the glare of your selfish 
desire ! 
A fig for their artists and scholars ! 
We crave the dry-rot of their dollars. 
We teach them to live in dark palaces. 
We lend them the sting of our malices. 
We preach them the practical Buddha of Self, 
And civilization the deification of pelf, 
The infinite snarl of sectarian watch-dogs religious. 
And spiteful revenge, and the sword of a spirit litigious, 
And a taste for the gaudy grotesque and the pompous 
prodigious. 
O spirit of Genghis Khan 
Come, whirl through the circus of debt with your run- 
away span ! 
See Tamerlane, 
He lies in the corner unhorsed by the lance of cham- 
pagne ! 
Beware, the Centaurian daughters of Tartars 
May trip in their garters ! 

New navies in armor 
Are forged from the blood-weight of rice; 

And the food of the farmer 
Is sold at the throw of the dice. 
And decent despair in black coat stalks abroad through 
the land. 



EAST AND WEST. • 41 

The devil, he prays in good English, and swears like a 
gentleman grand. 

And here come art-students with honors ! 

They graduate strictly in marble madonnas. 
No more shall their panels be carved with a lily grotesque. 
They swear by the natural Raphaelesque arabesque; 
Cut anchors for stencils, 
And round up a portrait with Christian lead-pencils, 

Improving the mighty Napoleon 

With phrenology slightly Mongolian. 

Child of some blind bewildered bard 

Learning Sunday-school tunes by the yard ! 

Sons of earth's supplest dancers 

To graduate in the Lancers ! 

Friends of idolatrous priests 

Converted in time for strawberry feasts ! 

Confucius indeed! 

A dried-up old seed ! 
They know of the prigs and the canting professors who 
came of that breed ! 

And Roshi who looks at the cracks 

On terrapins' backs ! 
Why, they blush as they think of the foxes they used to 

avoid in the stacks ! 
And Buddha, with baubles and bubbles of principles 

easily blowable ? — 
No, thank you ! Philosophers rightly prefer the Unknow- 
able! 



42 EAST AND WEST. 

O you East in the West, 
What is true? What is best? 
You buzz with absurd speculation, and break up the pride 

of our rest. 
We thought we had got to the bottom of evil, and sick- 
ness, and charity. 
Don't speak of a Carpenter's Son ! It reveals a too pain- 
ful disparity ! 

O civilization on the verge of salvation. 
Exposed to perfection of nature's selection. 
Let us thank men of money that the world is so funny ! 
Let us shout for the wings that are sprouting on kings ! 
Let us peep through the prism of their sly optimism, 
Mark the self-evanescence of evil's excrescence, 
Watch them feeding their mystics on juicy statistics. 
Hear bliss roar through the craters of grain-elevators ! 

O this spirituality of pure externality ! 
Which can patch up disasters with arnica plasters, 
Pipe the fountain of men's ills with cunning utensils. 
Catch a shower of schisms in a cistern of isms ! 
Were the world one vast greenery of hot-house 

machinery. 
Could you speed all creation with the spur of taxation. 
Do you think that would muzzle the asp in the puzzle ? 
Would it snuff out the fire of the primal desire? 

O dance of the dishes ! O pulse of the purses ! 
O whirlpool of wishes ! O chaos of curses ! 
O hybrid hypocrisy of high-bred democracy ! 



EAST AND WEST. 43 

O self-contradictions of pious convictions! 
O mental congestions of insoluble questions ! 
Are there no panaceas for a glut of ideas? 
Here 's a sweet little charmer who dotes upon karma! 
Now why should it please her to worry and guess 
Whether last she were Caesar or merely Queen Bess? 
We all came from Eve, and we 're bound to confess 
That her first incarnation was not a success. 
Or, horrible thought! 't was perhaps a baboon, 
Or a small elemental who fell from the moon ! 
For you never can tell when your head starts to twitch 
If it means a Mahatma, or only a witch : — 
Which accounts for reliance on Psychical Science. 
Nay, take the bread pills of your hypnotized wills, 
Even antidotes sweeter than the Baghavad Gita ! 
You may ride upon tables that mount to the gables. 
Or hum the doxology in terms of astrology. 
Or prove a prime gabble-er concerning the Kabbala : — 
You may play with the derrick of things esoteric. 
Or hear from a ghost by a note through the post : — 
But, you'll find slight relief in eschewing roast-beef. 
Or the juice of the berry that sparkles in sherry; 
For be sure that the devil can find out your level 
Be you common-place people or a-perch on a steeple. 

O you West in the East, O you East in the West, 
Were it best that you ceased, best at least for your rest? 
For you 're lost in endeavor, and tossed in commotion, 
As the blood of a river on the flood of an ocean. 



44 EAST AND WEST. 

And you laugh like a bride in the season of June; 
And you dance like a tide at the kiss of the moon. 
For you leap like a pard from the rock-hidden throne 

of your pride; 
And you plunge like a gull in the storm-ridden plumes 

of the main; 
And you flash like a star from the sun-bidden voids of 

the spheres. — 
But your plunging is vain, 
And your leaping is wide, 
And your flashing a moment of years. 
For though in a whirl you pass by us 
Like the rout of some fleeing Darius, 
At length as of old you shall come 
Out of this second pandemonium. 
And kneel with the mild 
Faith of a little child : — 
Untangle the snarls of your skein. 
Assort them and weave them again, 
Massing all the reds 
With appropriate threads. 
The blues and the greens 
In harmonious sheens, 
Purples and yellows 
At peace with their fellows. 

Yet such chromatic powers 
E'en now are dimly ours; 
Foretaste of human bliss 



EAST AND WEST. 45 

In tuneful synthesis ! 

Music, our fairest, latest daughter, 

Diamond of perfect water, 

Plead for the West before the throne of Truth, 

Pledge of our unripe youth ! 

Who spaced the vibrant stars 

Of self-taught orchestras, 

Breath polyphonic 

From heavens harmonic, 

The sympathetic nodes 

Of Orphic odes? 

The spirit of Beethoven 

With worlds of unseen spirit woven. 

Melody white with glee 

Like yachts upon a sea ! 

Gemmed white with glee 

Like yachts on a sea 

When the blue waves sparkle to breezes free; 

Or a-cool in calms 

Of a pool of palms 

In the sunset seas of the master, Brahms. 

What shall we say 

At dawn of day 

To the lark that leaps from the lilac spray ? 

Would it not suit 

The note of a flute 

Afloat on the tremulous waves of a lute ? 



46 EAST AND WEST. 

Or a murmur of breeze 

Through the summering trees 

Let the soft strings hum like the humming of bees; 

Or a trumpet sweet, 

Like a wing on the wheat, 

As it flings ripe gold at the listener's feet. 

In the first amaze 

Of a West ablaze 

The tone clouds glisten with scarlet rays, 

While the inlaid whirls 

Of roses and pearls 

Are sweet as a chorus of laughing girls. , 

Like the crimson of plums 

A long line comes 

With the long-drawn sweep of the stirring drums. 

And the answering rills 

Of a thousand trills 

Are filling the purple cups of the hills. 

Now a rattle of hail 

From the rising gale, 

And the storm-clouds sweep like a world's torn sail! 

And the piccolo's shriek 

Is a lightning streak, 

While the big bass booms as the thunders speak ! 

Now it sounds afar 

Like the rush of a car. 

And a moon caresses the evening star; 



EAST AND WEST. 47 

And a sweet smile lies 
With a tear of surprise 
On the quivering lash of the world's meek eyes. 

Like spirits blown 

From an astral zone 

Are drifting the wonderful mists of tone. 

And the moments seem 

To drift with the stream 

Till I know not whether I die or dream. 



"Let us mount! let us mount! 'T is the spur of the 

horn!"— 
Let us stay ! let us pray ! 'T is the peace of the morn. 



PART V. 
EJe ihiture Union of iEast anti Mest. 

Yet once again discordant trumpets cease 
To mar the music of the hemispheres. 
So shall the future world a rose of peace 
Blend with the tender lily of her prayers, 
And music sweet shall float upon her airs 
To melt all souls in floods of happy tears. 

O wing of the Empress of mountains, 
What song shall we draw from thy fountains ? 
Shall it come with a flutter of doves? 
Shall it foam with the nestling of loves? 
Shall it soothe with the poison of sleep, 
Or dance like a sun on the deep? 
Nay, no prattle of children or elf. 
But the self-hood unconscious of self ! 

Soul of my inner face, face of my race. 
The play is o'er. Remove thy tragic mask, 
And show that hidden feature which no god 
Hath e'er divined; till she, thy counterpart, 
48 



EAST AND WEST. 49 

Bent o'er thy heart when listening to thy sleep. 
Then in thine own true dream she saw thee smile 
With sunlike manhood; and she said, "'Tis well. 
The world has waited. 
With my kiss he wakes ! " 



Breathe thy kiss on the world's twin soul, 
Mornings that sleep in a crystal vision ! 
Waft thy music from pole to pole, 
Airs that sweep from the fields Elysian; 
Star-planes lighted by Love's transition! 

Gaze, O world, at the sleeping sea 
Perched on thy castle in fond amazement. 
Open thy spirit to breezes free. 
Open to whisper of love thy casement : 
Fling it open from roof to basement. 

Space is the kiss of the breeze's daughter; 
Kiss her gently, and worlds are one. 
Time but the flashing of restless water; 
Ages are lost when the day is done 
In the infinite now of the setting sun. 

Let us forget like a chanted tune 
Shadowy types of the dying races. 
History nods to her ancient rune. 
Ages lapse with their tidal traces. 
Blend in the vision of future faces. 



50 EAST AND WEST. 

Fold like the wing of a new-born creature, 
East and West in a Janus trance ! 
Tear off the mask of the twofold feature; 
Kiss in the mirror with eyes askance, 
Love, Narcissus, thine own sweet glance. 



God hath willed this soul to be 
Like twin branches of a tree. 
Whose wet leaves the sunset weaves 
In one choral crown of glee. 

Petals of infolded plan, 
Model of millennial man. 
Thine the vows of bride and spouse 
Plighted since the world began. 

Life shall be a twofold game; — 

Harmony thy primal aim ; 

Individuality 

Twin-born guerdon of thy fame. 

What then shalt thou harmonize ? 
All that force the Westerns prize ; — 
Masculinity of measures. 
Vigilance of Argus eyes. 

Whence shall spring harmonic norms? 
From the sun the Eastern warms; — 



EAST AND WEST. SI 

Loving femininity, 
Fertile flower-bed of forms. 

Then shall art with beauty rife 
Melt into the Art of Life, 
And the marts of industry 
Win for starving sons of strife. 

Stir of mill like hum of tabor 
Singing of goodwill to neighbor, 
Exaltation of creation, 
Apotheosis of Labor ! 

If true harmony is prized, 
Man is self-decentralized; 
Christ's impersonality 
World-absorbed and emphasized ! 

Not a crushing code of rules 
For a paradise of fools; 
But fresh joy of leaping fountains 
Mid the broken shafts of schools. 

Faith incredulous of creeds, 
Love is full of bursting seeds; 
Scatters showers of living flowers 
Through a wilderness of weeds. 

So may perfect Art and Prayer, 
Life and Faith in union rare, 



52 EAST AND WEST. 

Build the soul new tabernacles, 
World-encircling domes of air. 

Age of worship crowned with spires, 
Flames of purified desires, 
Consecrate thy knights for battle 
With thy symphony of choirs. 

Who shall sing this song of spheres? 
Whose the soul's baptismal tears? 
Who anoint with tenderest touches 
Christ's eternal wounds of spears? 

Thine, O thine, that martyred breast, 
White-souled Virgin of the West, 
Heaven-crowned sisterhood of sorrows, 
Love's incarnate Alkahest! 

Who shall arm these knights with flame? 
Who transmit the oath-bound aim? 
Who shall crumble stars to powder 
With the sceptre of God's name? 

Thou, O selfless self-sworn priest. 
Soul-wrapped manhood of the East ! 
Let thy heel with diamond lightning 
Blast the eyelids of the Beast ! 

Fuse the worlds with inward light. 
Faith-fed kingly anchorite ! 



EAST AND WEST. 53 

Fire of Bodhisattwa Wisdom 
With the Sun of Love unite ! 

Thus may knighthood of defiance 
Consecrate the arm of science; 
Twin-joined vigor of the ages, 
Corner-stone of God's reliance. 

Thus may Christlike Mercy render 
Holiest warmth to Beauty tender; 
Twin-joined womanhood of races, 
Sunlike heart of God's own splendor. 

Corner-stone and sunlike heart! 
Strife in Wisdom, Love in Art! 
Thou art joined in twofold marriage, 
Links which Time can never part ! 



unveiled bride, 

Sweet other self at my side, 

1 ask no wedding bliss 

Of passionate external kiss. 

Let not the trembling pulse of lips 

This purer ecstasy eclipse. 

'T is not a palpitating form 

I clasp to bosom warm. 

I feel thee wrap my soul 

As in the splendor of an aureole. 



54 EAST AND WEST. 

I breathe thy breath as through my spirit came 

A tongue of Pentecostal flame. 

No human spouse e'er felt 

The culminating fire in which I melt. 

There let it burn 
Like clouded incense from a temple urn; 
And in its fragrant steam 
Thy thoughts unfold like angels in a dream, 
Unutterable things, 
The fluttering music of elusive wings. 
Flashings of interspacial laws 
Wafted like webs of gauze. 
Bathing the room 
In floods of opalescent bloom ! 
And, as the dead arise 
In transformed drapery to open skies, 
When wreaths of petalled trumpets wrap the stars 
In last triumphal chords of orchestras. 
And in the stern archangels' tracks 
The skies dissolve like fields of smoking wax; — 
So from my inmost core 
Shrivelled like paper in a furnace roar, 
Or rocks where lavas hiss 
From Etna's treacherous abyss, 
Rises a bloom of heavenly asphodel; 
Bursting its elemental shell 
A song of winged bliss 
As from Creation's chrysalis — 



EAST AND WEST. 

A dim uncertain form divine, 

O love, thy soul and mine. 

Draped in soft veils of holiness, 

Shrouded in Deity's caress ! 

Slowly it floats like spirit mist 

By forests of tall tapers kissed, 

Slowly alone 

Up to the gilded altar's throne. 

Hovering there 

Like a condensing universe of prayer; — 

Girt with bright-haloed constellations, 

Memories of incarnations 

Glowing like fallen leaves 

Upon fresh-garnered sheaves. 

There for a moment brief 

It sits like God upon a lotus leaf; 

The still unspoken Word 

Before Creation stirred. 

Or the transcendant Dove 

Fell like a ray of love ; — 

Then fades in formless light 

Too exquisite for human sight; 

As when some saint is lifted up and hurled 

Out of this mortal world. 

This temple transitory 

For Nature's unemancipated priest. 

Into the silence of Nirwana's glory. 

Where there is no more West and no more East. 



MINOR POEMS. 



PASTORAL. 

'Neath the hill, beside the stream 
Stands a lowly shepherd's cot. 

But contented doth he seem 
In his humble lot. 

Seldom strays the traveller here. 

No one helps him sow and reap. 
He, as our Redeemer dear, 

Loves to tend the sheep. 

Fragrant is his simple life. 
Earthly sin to him unknown ; 

All his friends the flock and fife, 
Otherwise alone. 

Innocent devoted one. 

Would my heart could be as thine ! 
Sweet the crown for service done. 

Lord, like his be mine ! 



59 



DECEMBER. 

The crafty wind 

Doth now unbind 

The giant of the winter blind. 

With cold slow breath 

A curse he saith, 

And softly wraps the earth with death. 

The hills make moan. 

The birds are flown. 

The leaves on barren graves are strewn. 

Or hanging sere 

They mock and leer, — 

The charnel spirits of the year. 

And thus we die. 

Our hopes are high ; — 

But Time shall turn his wintry sky. 

O bliss! O grief! 

To be a leaf, 

And flutter for a moment brief ! 



60 



THE HOUR. 

Soft the purple night is falHng 

Over moor and dell. 
Whispered prayers of love recalling, 

Chants the evening bell. 

Cool the hour when dear ones hieing 

Seek a well-known spot, 
There to one another sighing 

Of they know not what. 

But the wood-thrush sighs and knows it 
Where the glow-worms peep, 

And the drowsy west wind blows it 
Where the marsh buds sleep. 

There on tiptoe moonlight listens 

To the cooing dove ; 
There the silent dew-drop glistens 

For my waiting love. 



6i 



REQUIEM. 

Speak softly and low 
Of the dead that are laid 'neath the willows asleep. 
They have felt their last pain; they have dealt their 
last blow, — 

Tread softly and weep. 

No murmur or sigh 
Comes up from the grave with a thrill or a shiver — 
We listen in vain for a moan or a cry 

From over the river. 

But soon we shall tread 
The path that they trod ; and the mantle of sleep 
Shall cover us all as it covers the dead. — 

Speak softly and weep ! 



62 



THE DRYAD. 

I WOOED the gentle spirit from a tree, 

And asked her, " What art thou that thou shouldst be 

So patient in thy green eternity? 

" Why dost thou brood upon the mountain lone. 
Where mortal ne'er may hear thy plaintive moan, 
Hear thy sweet sigh, and blend it with his own? " 

She answered like a zephyr soft and low, 
" The cause of my estate I do not know. 
I live — am happy — God hath willed it so. 

"Think not, proud soul, that all is planned for you. 
Where men come not bloom flowers of fairest hue, 
And Heaven unfolds the same ethereal blue." 



63 



ON OPENING AN ALBUM. 

Your flowers are dead : — the fair sweet flowers 

You gave me in the days gone by. 
Not all the cooling summer showers 

Could save them. They were bom to die. 

These roses on their withered stem 

Hang crushed and brown that bloomed so red. 
How fragrant when you gathered them ! 

And still their perfume is not fled. 

No : — and the scented heHotrope, 

Blue-eyed and pure as maiden's breath, 

Dear token of our love and hope, 

Lies faintly sweet though wan in death. 

So like the flowers we droop ! Like these 
The pink-veined hope of youth decays ; 

And maytimes from the apple trees 
Snow down dead sweets upon the ways. 

Yet lingers in this vale of tears 

Some fragrance death may not remove ; 

Yea, from a spirit crushed with years 
One perfume sweet whose name is love. 
64 



ON OPENING AN ALBUM. 65 

So now to you, though far apart, 

In song like scented leaf, I pray, 
O press these verses to your heart 

As you would me if I were they ! 



THE SOUL QUESTIONS. 

The voice of the Present unheeded 
Is drowned in a tempest of sighs, ^ 

Those sighs that the fancy hath breeded. 
The Past is the beam in our eyes. 

We look o'er a garden unweeded 
For rapture of bloom to arise. 

Alas, for humanity's error, 

The self that bewilders the brain. 
The pleasure that whirls in the vein, 

And brings on the phantoms of terror, 
The terrible demons of pain ! 

The cities are buried in gloom. 

The temple of man is a waste ; 

A shaft on a desolate waste. 
He laughs like a ghost in the tomb 

To which he is starred. In his haste 
He prays for the curse of his doom 

As if it were gold of the graced. 

On the beacon of hills is a breath, 
But a gasp, of the life-giving air. 
As it flees from the rising mist, death, 
66 



THE SOUL QUESTIONS. 67 

That blows through the valleys its hair, 
The thoughts of its pestilent hair ; 
And soft to the universe saith, 

" Behold me, ye fools, and despair." 

O God, if delusion is all. 

If fancy and pleasure are cheating 
And luring on man to his fall, 

If beauty be fickle and fleeting, 

If thought be the worm in the sweeting, 
If truth be a loosely built wall 

Where doubt like an ocean is beating : — 

O, why didst Thou give us to be ? 

Not crush the dark seed of creation ? 
Why suffer each doomed constellation? 

Why foam in thy querulous sea ; 

If all be not blessing from thee. 
And crowned with thine utter salvation ? 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 

This world was not 

As it now is seen. 
It once was clothed 

With a deeper green ; 
And rarer gems 

Than the ice-caves hold 
The sea brought up 

On the sands of gold. 

But rust of ages, 

The breath of Time, 
The meadows covered 

With early rime. 
And the wild grass faded. 

The gems were gone, 
And the wave fell cold 

As it thundered on. 

In bygone ages 
The world was fair, 

And the moon-god played 
With her golden hair ; 
68 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 69 

And the paling stars 

With love-white arms 
Bent down to welcome 

A sister's charms. 



The air lay sweet 

With the breath of pines, 
The hill-tops glowed 

With their wealth of mines. 
And sweet, and low. 

And rich, and free. 
The wild dark music 

Stole over the sea. 

And the sea-waves laughed 

At the saffron moon. 
And the musk rose smiled 

With her soul of June. 
And the golden age 

Of nature's years 
No warning heard 

Of her coming tears. 

But the hand of man 
Was the sword of death. 

A poison lurked 

In his savage breath. 



70 THE GOLDEN AGE. 

And the wealth of years 
And the glow of years 

Were drowned in a flood 
Of swelling tears. 

The world was fair 

In the days of yore ; — 
But that golden age 

Shall come no more. 
The sun may shine, 

And wild flowers bloom \ • 
But the goal of all 

Is the open tomb ; — 

The end of all 

Is the silent grave. 
And beauty lies 

In the cold still wave. 
And the world shall harden 

The hearts of men 
Till it hear the voice 

Of its Christ again. 



THE SNOWDROP. 

Poor snowdrop, early for a snowdrop born; 

The February sun is high, and winds 

Steal from the feigning South with breath of spring. — 

But frost-gods only hide. Sweet flower, they wait 

To nip thee. See, snow crusts the fallow fields; 

And yonder schoolboy cracks the thinning ice. 

Behold what gloom of cloud hath chid the West. 

Alas, I think I hear the cold wind sigh 

In dread March days among the naked trees. 

The woodman still doth fell the kitchen log; 

And in his winter nest the squirrel hides. 

I see no glad spring bird, save chick-a-dee, 

Who bravely hops along the leafless bough. 

Snowdrop, this night the North King's icy breath 

Will blast thy budding hopes. Then, pretty flower, 

I '11 pluck thee from thy root; and thou shalt lie 

Beside the one I love, and wake warm smiles 

From her pale face at thought of me and thee. 

The sight of thy young life may quicken her 

To health and hope. Sweet silent messenger 

Of love, I envy while I pity thee ! 

There: — tremblest in my hand, my hard rude hand? 

Thou soon shalt lie upon her gentle breast; 

And thou shalt die where I have prayed to die. 



LOVE'S YOUTH. 

O DELICATE harp of Love, from whose gold strings 
The poets and the gods have deigned to waken 

That classic hymn which softly o'er me flings 
A fragrant dew from morning willows shaken 

By Cupid's hand, these dreaming eyes shall praise 
The Fair whose sway decreed thy glad creation, 

Who laughed to hear the eager boyish lays 
That woke thy heart with innocent elation, 

When years were tranquil as an olive leaf 
By sunny Argive seas. A broken shaft 

To-day we cherish in our shallow grief. 

We weep for thought of one who ever laughed. 

Sing for me once again, and let thy waves 

Ripple upon my bosom as a beach. 
Lend me thy notes that hushed the echoing caves; 

And calm the frenzied forests with thy speech. 

Call up a strain of melody so sweet 

That broken hearts shall vibrate like a rod 

Of mellow silver. Let the cadence beat. 
And die in wonder at the throne of God. 
72 



LOVE'S YOUTH. *ll 

O harp of youthful Love ! If these pure tones 

Be dumb forever, if no sunshine breathes 
Through airs of passion, if thy lips in moans 
Must turn to ashes in these clouded zones, 

Take back, O harp, my crown of laurel wreaths ! 



SONNET. 



MY PERFECT TRUTH. 



Shall love my angel be ? Or shall the flame 

Of wan ambition singe her tender wings? 

Why do I scoff at life to say deep things, 
And crush my heart to yield a bloodless name ? 
If thou wert dead, O God ! what bitter blame 

To yean these thoughts self-barbed with cruel stings ! 

O let me nest near some warm soul that sings; 
Not starve beneath a lone pale shaft of fame ! 
Yea, were I regent of the potent lore 

That lamps chaste sages' swoon, or crowned to see 
The white-hot diamond secret at the core 

Of winnowed wealth of worlds that yearn to be ; — 
Then would I scorn these tempters o'er and o'er, 

And clasp my perfect truth in only thee. 



74 



SONNET. 



MY SACRIFICE. 



See how the Northern sky with gauzy green 
The pink pearl blushes of her bosom pales, 
And hides her nuns of stars with hasty veils, 

Whose wanton eyes wink through the futile screen. 

And sparkle kisses to the moon serene 

As through cool bays of blue he veers and sails 
To lift the rainbow lace in countless trails 

That bar the chamber of his midnight queen. 

So have I hid when fond desire my breast 

Hath stained to crimson. So I veil these sighs 

Until some tear that will not be repressed 

Speaks through the quivering fringes of mine eyes. 

Then like a god thou comest from the West 
To sip the fragrance of my sacrifice. 



75 



SONNET. 

FUJI AT SUNRISE. 

Startling the cool gray depths of morning air 
She throws aside her counterpane of clouds, 
And stands half folded in her silken shrouds 

With calm white breast and snowy shoulder bare. 

High o'er her head a flush all pink and rare 
Thrills her with foregleam of an unknown bliss, 
A virgin pure who waits the bridal kiss. 

Faint with expectant joy she fears to share. 

Lo, now he comes, the dazzling prince of day ! 
Flings his full glory o'er her radiant breast; 
Enfolds her to the rapture of his rest. 

Transfigured in the throbbing of his ray. 

O fly, my soul, where love's warm transports are; 

And seek eternal bliss in yon pink kindling star ! 



76 



SONNET. 



HER LOVE. 



I WOULD thou wert a moon, and I thy cloud 
To wrap in rifted tangles of my tresses 
Thy soul's white naked mirror, lave caresses 

Of soft pale pleading lips where thou art browed 

With coronets of constellations proud 

Meet for thy regal thought; blue wildernesses 
Spreading eternal couch where love confesses 

Her airy penetrations, where the shroud 

Of my translucent bosom kindling gleams. 
Melted upon thy flame in blissful swoon. 

Fused with the silver passion of thy dreams; 

Thy heart's strung harp a-throb with hidden tune 

Winged from the primal pulse of God's own themes. 
O joy to be a cloud, and thou my moon! 



77 



REPROACH. 

Pleasure has left me, 

Happiness gone. 
Thou hast bereft me, 

I am alone. 
Sweetly the summer night 

Heard thy farewell; 
And the moon's tender light 

On thy face fell. 

Thou hast betrayed me; 

Yet I forgive. 
For thou hast made me 

Thine while I live. 
Though my heart 's broken, 

Take thou my last 
Sorrowful token 

Due to the past. 



If it be pleasure 
Brightens thy sun. 

Let not its measure 
Lawlessly run. 
78 



REPROACH. 79 

Life hath her duties 

Stern and unchanged 
Moulding her beauties 

Sadly estranged. 

Think not, thou fair one, 

Love hath grown cold. 
Still doth he bear one 

Thine as of old. 
But I shall never 

Happiness see 
Wedded forever 

Lyra, with thee. 

Life has grown dreary 

Since thou art gone, 
Lingering weary, 

Hopelessly on. 
Ne'er will I blame thee, 

Ne'er till I die. 
Slander may shame thee, 

Never will I. 



Dull was my spirit 
To thy young breast 

Fluttering near it, 
Dove, to thy nest. 



80 REPROACH. 

Was my emotion 
Sombre and cold? 

Billow of ocean 
Hoary and old ? 

Jollity's glitter 

Dazzled thine eye, 
Turned from the bitter 

Sweetness to try. 
One you discover 

Fairer to see. 
Never a lover 

Truer to thee. 

Soon shall I moulder 

Deep in the grave, 
Or in the colder 

Tomb of the wave. 
Lyra, forget not 

Passion so true. 
False one, regret not 

I bade thee adieu. 



THE WOOD DOVE. 

Gentle purple-throated dove 
Nesting in the bamboo grove, 

Cooing, cooing, cooing; 
I've a secret for you, dear. 
Let me whisper in your ear. 
Let no other creature hear; 

'T would be my undoing. 

Tenderly pressed, pressed, pressed 
Soft in your nest, nest, nest, 
Carefully list, list, list. 
If I be kissed, kissed, kissed. 
If I be 

There, you know my secret now. 
You, too, on the topmost bough 

Wooing, wooing, wooing. 
Did you tremble when he came ? 
Did you feel his lips a-flame? 
But you shall not know his name; 

'T would be my undoing. 
8i 



82 THE WOOD DOVE. 

Tenderly pressed, pressed, pressed 
Close to his breast, breast, breast, 
Under your nest, nest, nest. 
There shall I rest, rest, rest, 
There shall I 



SEPTEMBER. 

The last light of summer hath faded and gone. 
The sweet autumn days come enchantingly on. 
The breasts of the trees don a joy-colored hue. 
The sky is a curtain of mystical blue. 

These airs, they caress like a maiden's soft hand. 
The mountains lie purple, and misty, and grand. 
And forests are mellow, and gardens sing gay; 
And Nature is smiling this fair autumn day. 

Goodbye to poor summer. No doubt she did good; 
Though sentinel birches were scorched in the wood. 
Her heart was too warm; but she meant to do well. 
And we bade her goodbye as the mercury fell. 

Hail, goddess of autumn, I see through the sky 
Sweep on in the cloudlets resplendently by. 
Thy form is half hid; but I know thou art there 
By the sweet-scented breath which is borne in the air. 

Come, apples and peaches, and fall from the trees. 
And ripe yellow plums, tumble down at your ease. 
And, clusters of grapes hanging blue on the vine, 
Come down and be eaten, or pressed for pure wine. 

83 



84 SEPTEMBER. 

O sweet the long lashes of sunny-eyed days. 
Their bosoms are hid in the mantles of haze. 
How cool is their mossy green lap in the shade 
Of golden-haired oaks with their rock-maple braid. 

O lordly September, thou prince of the hills, 
The loyal green meadows grow gold with thy thrills. 
The mellow sheaves fall for the harvesters blythe. 
And I hear the sharp tinkle of whet on the scythe. 

Let 's think not of days when this beauty shall pass. 
And the splendor fade out from the hills and the grass, 
When through the bare tree-tops the wind whistles shrill, 
And the hoar frost at morning is white on the sill. 

No, no. Torrid summer is over and gone. 
The fair autumn days come enchantingly on. 
Then bask in the sunshine, or sit in the shade 
And watch the bright clouds as they color and fade. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1875. 

Relentless Time, dear friends, has breathed again 
His wintry mood o'er Nature and on men. 
Long since the recreant sun's declining power 
Has clipped the merry daylight hour by hour. 
Long since the feathered tribes on tireless wing 
Have sought the regions of perpetual spring. 
Now bound in crystal chains the woodland lake 

And laughing streamlet hushed to silence lie. 
Now earthward softly floats the glittering flake. 

And gathering storm-clouds drift across the sky. 
Dead in the hollows lie the autumn leaves, 

And through the naked tree-tops softly stirs 
The spirit of the dying Year, and grieves 

In slow, sad moaning to the Universe. 

Not so man's soul. Than all the year beside 

Dearer his home is when the cold winds blow; 
Great his domestic joy in winter tide. 

And bright his hearth as piles the drifting snow, 
'T is then the happy children hail the day 

That Christ a little child like them was born. 
'T is then the old are young, and young are gay 

With the felicities of New Year's morn. 

85 



86 NEW YEAR'S EVE, iSjs- 

We Stand indeed 'twixt two eternities 

Of Time ; and one has vanished like the dew. 
Deep in its breast the stellar systems grew; 

And in its dead arms now the last sun lies. 

A million ages drop from life and mind 
As yesterday, when they are past, and all 
The planets circle at their central call. 

And never note the years they leave behind. 

The slow earth cracked and shrank mid rains of fire, 
Till through the dull mephitic atmosphere 
Young Life arose, and whispered, " I am here ! " 

And thrilled the Universe with new desire. 

Far in the sand a sculptured stone appears. 

Deep on the halls of kings has grown the mould. 

O, Love is ever young, and ever old ; 
And hand in hand with Time walk hates and fears. 
Deep in the wondrous strata of the earth 

Bones of successive ages crystallized, 

Humanity lies only half-disguised. 
A chipped flint tells us of a nation's birth. 
From out the mother liquor of events 

Precipitates the dim historic tale. 

And thou. Old Year, hast passed within the vale. 
And night shuts o'er thee with her spangled tents. 

We stand upon the threshold of an ocean. 
And hear hard by the foaming waters break 

O'er sunken reefs. We feel the wild commotion; 
And the salt wind leaves damp spray in its wake. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1873. 87 

But like a magic curtain shuts the mist 

That open sea forever from our eyes, 
Rich argosies that sail before the East, 

The infinite horizon of the skies. 
Ho ! Captain of yon bark, so stanch and brave ! 

What noble aim has fortified your sail? 
What guide-post have you on the trackless wave ? 

And points your compass at the moral pole ? 
Peer long into unknown futurity ! 

But shallow seas and rocks thou needst not fear 

When full equipped; for in that clouded sphere 
Thy will alone is master of the sea. 

'Twixt two eternities of Time we stand; 
But three infinities of Space. Where lives 

A human soul, in whatsoever land, 

Our heart to him a joyful greeting gives. 

Yet on the wearied continents the bounds 
Of artificial custom wax and wane. 
As war drifts o'er them like a hurricane, 

And death's hot hell unleashes all her hounds. 

O, then we sadly find, with all our art. 
And scientific pride, and conscious boast. 
He falls the farthest who has climbed the most, 

And man is but a savage yet at heart. 

E'en as an earthquake comes unheralded, 
Or some volcano splits the trembling skies. 
We know not when the giant will arise. 

And frighted earth be steeped in gory red. 



88 NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1873- 

Then things we held most dear shall pass away, 
And life be crushed beneath an iron spell, 
And earth shall groan, as when Atlantis fell, 

And all creation dreamed of Judgment Day. 

Poor France ! Thou wast the first to feel the blow. 
Caught in the specious tyrant's silken net. 
Thou hast the ghost of Freedom only yet; 

And in thy breast too many hot sparks glow. 

Thy Teuton master stands with frowning brow 
Like Jove before the Titans. In his hands 
He holds the keys of Fate. To his commands 

The trembling kings of earth reluctant bow. 

An unread mystic obelisk he stands. 
But when his shadow on the dial falls, 
Grim shouts of death shall shake Valhalla's halls. 

And pyramids be crumbled into sands. 

Yet, like a crouching monster, in the East 
Slowly the Slavic power unfolds its coils; 
And effete Asia falls into its toils 

A wounded bird, that can no more resist. 

Or, like a tidal wave its course shall be 
Above the Aryan cradle of the world. 
Until, against the vast Himalyas hurled. 

To Heaven shall rise the spray of that wild sea. 

Let Britain now usurp the old domain 
Of dread Sesostris and the Ptolemies, 

And found that Eastern Empire, which in vain 
Napoleon dreamed of and designed for his. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE, 187^. 89 

Then face to face will meet the mighty foes 
For the death grapple. Saintly Pity's knell 
Will sound in shrieks. And in that lurid hell 

A thousand years will melt away like snows. 

As some great continental artery 

Empties its flood upon the coming tide, 
And in that grand collision far and wide 

Tiptoe to Heaven stands up the frothing sea, 

So shall the struggle of the nations be 

When flood-gates burst by press of passion high. 
The earth's wild wail shall plash against the sky. 

Yea, shake the dwellers of the galaxy. 

And can we, children of the Island race, 
Stand far aloof, like eagles in a cloud. 
And hear the rushing of the conflict loud 

Like some dull echo off in shoreless space? 

Nay, in the network of Atlantic coasts 

The ties of brotherhood too close are knit; 
And when the trial comes, prepared for it 

America shall marshal all her hosts. 



GOD'S FORESTS. 

Let us give thanks for friendly solitudes 

Of dark primeval woods, 

Where jaded kings of men 

As at a shrine may charge themselves again 

With rays magnetic 

Of fire prophetic, 

Currents of inspiration 

That circulate through God's unspoiled creation. 

'T is well the human soul 

Is nature's final goal; 

That worlds dissolve in time's relentless void, 

And suns should be destroyed 

To yield one drop of penitential bliss. 

Or the sweet perfume of Christ's pardoning kiss. 

Yet flesh-spun bodies 
Dim not the sphere where God is. 
Nor are these care-worn streets the places 
Where fall the gentlest dews of spiritual graces. 
The fevered pulse of over-nourished wealth 
Bodes not of health. 
Nor is it Christian life 
To glory in the elemental strife, 
90 



GOD'S FORESTS. 91 

Inherited from birth, 

'Twixt man and earth. 

Or why 

Boast of our eagerness to multiply 

These sense-distracted strings, 

That sound no newborn note of hopeful things, 

But as in dreams 

Babble the self-same themes? 

O pity ! that our toil 

Sunk in this precious acreage of soil 

Should feed, ere harvest day begins. 

The wasting conflagration of our sins ! 

Better the unripe times ' 

Of pregnant Tertiary climes 

Where the slow-ebbing waters lay 

Upon rich mines of vegetable clay ! 

Is there no flaw 

In title of a self -consuming law? 

Play we the tyrant less 

In thin disguise of democratic dress? 

Who gave the right 

To disinherit man for revels of a night? 

And am I free to desecrate my home. 

As Nero burned his Rome? 

God made the mountains lone 

Crowned with the nimbus of a cooler zone 

For evening worship of the weary plain; 



92 GOD'S FORESTS. 

And tilted up their sides 

To give the impulse to His founts of rain; 

And clothed them with His robe of living green, 

And folded them in gauze of misty sheen, 

As lovers deck their brides : 

Full-orbed, and mellow in their juicy youth; 

Not swept by sudden flood 

Of hot intemperate blood, 

Nor wan with limp distress 

And quick exhausted by their bald excess; 

But fresh and moist like ever vernal truth : 

Yielding a sympathetic tear 

For every crisis of the tragic year, 

Saving earth's tidal flow 

For daily bounty to the fields below. 

Or spreading kindly wing of storm superb 

To shield each parching herb. 

Even as planes of unseen spirit brood 

O'er thirsty deserts of our human mood. 

Caught in their net of roots, as in a cloud, 

The small drops slip 

With many a sob and drip 

Down the draped bosoms of the granite-browed; 

Till with shy looks 

Of fairies gliding from a hundred nooks 

They leap together 

In swift cool plashing of the hidden brooks. 

Now bolder-hearted. 



GOD'S FORESTS. 93 

Skipping from dewy fringes of the heather, 

As tears of joy escape in clearing weather 

The soft lids parted, 

Or children who should roam 

Unconscious of their long deserted home, 

So hand in hand, 

A happy laughing band, 

They dance upon the gardens of the land. 

So shall the gladsome music of their bliss 

Breathe life upon man's wearied industries. 

No laggards they, 

Or careless drones upon a wanton way. 

But ever helpful in their lightest play. 

Whether in moments still 

Of dreamy mood on heaven-reflecting lawn, 

Or racing like a startled fawn 

At whistle of the mill. 

Or in the frenzy of their maddest reels 

Churning the curds of froth from circling wheels, 

Or far, far down 

Lightening with laughter of their lips 

The stately march of heavy-laden ships 

Toward the town; — 

Gladly they water every hopeful soil 

Of honest human toil. 

Till blended with the elemental seas 

God grants them well-earned peace. 



94 GOD'S FORESTS. 

So let US thank Him for these hills of pine, 

The voice divine 

That echoes in His plan 

For self -bound man; 

And from His purer ways 

In nature's sweet unbroken peace 

May we behold the law of our release 

In life of thankful use and reverential praise. 



LOVE AND MUSIC. 

God spoke ! 
His breath upon cold planes of space congealed, 
Like morning's rising wreath of smoke 
Above a vernal field ! 

It was the piercing Word 
That the long shining coils of Chaos stirred ! 
It blossomed like a snowdrop from a frozen sod - 
The word was God ! 

Yet in the very bosom of this Law 

A blazing star I saw, 

Whose sympathetic glow 
Melted the crystals of that universal snow 

Into one blinding human mood of thaw. 

It was the message of the Holy Dove, 
The unity of Love ! 

So in our crowns of praise 
Woven in soulful moments of our earthly days 
I know the circling secret of a joy transcends 
The ministry of thought for colder, clearer ends ! 

95 



96 LOVE AND MUSIC. 

Ah, Music, thine 
The throbbing, bleeding, unifying heart 
That burns within the central shrine 

Of perfect Art ! 

And speech, — O, speech ! — 
Lies like a pure white maiden out of reach — 
Farther and farther down 

She circles like a falling crown. 

And from this sensitive and rare 
Harp of the unarticulated air 
A soft rose-scented cloud of beauty swells. 
As from a myriad nodding fairy bells 

By breath of morning rung, 
As if each ether-atom had a tongue. 

Ah, Music, tell us 
Harmonious secrets that shall make speech jealous. 

Let poets crawl 
Over the dusty mountains of yon ball ! 

Let utmost fire of verses run 
With hiss of rockets to the absorbing sun ! 

They have no words 
To match the spontaneous eloquence of birds. 
Their whispers vainly drift like trees 
Upon the torrents of the astral seas. 

And when the Sun in moody frowns and smiles 
The universe inbreathes. 
Or shoots coronal wreaths 



LOVE AND MUSIC. 97 

In maddening radiance through a million miles, 
The master of the lyre alone shall hear that spell 
Like some rapt maiden listening to a white reverber- 
ating shell. 
Thought leaps beyond 
The painful cycle of a finite bond, 
Swept to a hot magnetic plane, 
Like smoke of burning worlds caught in a hurricane. 

So, Music, thine the deeper, truer word 
God in the temple of His silence heard 

When sense was born. 
No outward broken symbol angels knew. 
With one harmonious throb of Love they flew 
Upon the pearly bosom of that primal morn. 



AT HER TOMB. 

The forests hang sober, 

The winds mutter dread. 
They speak to my heart, 

But my heart it is dead. 
Like breath of a spirit 

They sigh through the trees, 
But my sorrow is deaf 

To the grief of the breeze. 

Far off in the woodland 

Is dug a new grave. 
My soul is there buried; 

No saviour to save ! 
There violets murmur 

A fragrant farewell; 
And the cricket's low chanting 

Resounds through the dell. 

I lie on my bosom, 

And sob to their sound; 

My cheek in the grass. 

And my lips to the ground. 



AT HER TOMB. 99 

O hearts may be broken, 

And bitter tears come; 
But the dead cannot hear thee. 

They sleep and are dumb. 

Hang out thy red lantern 

star in the East, 

That the morning may break 

And my soul be released ! 
But the mist only hangs 

Thicker yet on the night; 
And I hear a low sob 

As it stifles thy light. 

Is it winds that I fancy 

Are lisping my name? 
On the cross at her head 

Seems to burn a pale flame. 
And a horror has seized me, 

A fear and a thrill. 
That the souls of the buried 

Are nigh to us still. 

Ah no, hollow chamber ! 

Farewell, thou dear gleam ! 
'T was a fancy deranged 

By the lull of a dream. 
But I call thee, and shudder, 

1 writhe, and I moan 
That thy spirit should vanish 

And leave me alone. 



TELEPATHY. 

O WOULD we were downy white feathers, 

Or gossamer fabrics of laces, 
To float through the stratum of weathers 

To the calm of the infinite spaces; 
To linger like stars which the peaks at morn 

Compel to receive their caresses 
On the low gray couch where the day is born, 
And wrapped in the gold of Aurora's tresses ! 
O, whether the world be weary 

We 'd care not a snap of a finger; 
You on Dhawalagiri, 
And I on Kunchinjinga. 

On the breasts of the snowy Himalyas 

Firm rounded in virginal fashion. 
We 'd burn like the crimson of dahlias 

At the twin pink foci of passion; 
You with a rainbow arch beneath 

And the Milky Way to lie on, 
With the Zodiac for a bridal wreath, 

And the diamond brooch of the great Orion. 

ICX) 



TELEPA THY. 101 

Ah, whether the world be weary 
We 'd care not a snap of a finger; 

You on Dhawalagiri, 
And I on Kunchinjinga. 

Away from the curses and crazes 
And deserts of vulgar desire ! 
To know the impalpable mazes 

Are the exquisite centres of fire ! 
Where the spirit can doff the world's deceit, 

And stand in its naked glory, 
And woo in the white of a native heat. 
And not in the vows of a lying story. 
There, whether the world be weary 

We 'd care not the snap of a finger; 
You on Dhawalagiri, 
And I on Kunchinjinga. 

A fig for the standard ascetic ! 

We 'd crave no intangible blisses. 
On the ray of a current magnetic 

I could feel the throb of your kisses; 
I could hold you close as a sweet pea vine 

With twisted tendrils a-quiver, 
I could drink your breath as a spicy wine, 
As a thirsty desert absorbs a river. 
So, whether the world be weary 

We 'd care not a snap of a finger; 
You on Dhawalagiri, 
And I on Kunchinjinga. 



102 TELEPA THY. 

Were not this the proof of divinity 
To love without limit or measure, 
To raise to the bliss of infinity 

The Tantalus torture of pleasure ? 
For the new-blown rose of your cheek shall pale, 

And buds dry up with their juices. 
But this fountain of youth shall never fail. 
The angels know its immortal uses. 
Come, whether the world be weary 

Let 's care not a snap of a finger, 
You on Dhawalagiri, 
And I on Kunchinjinga. 



REVERIE. 

Where moonlight is stealing 
Through juniper branches, I stand; 
And my heart 
Is wrapped in the feeling 
That falls from some wonderful land 
Where thou art. 

I mirror thy sweetness 
In fancy upon the blue heaven 
Afar; 
And sigh for the fleetness 
Beside thee to float that is given 
A star. 

Cold mist like a spirit 
Blown in from the East settles over 
The sea. 
Sweet music : — I hear it 
Borne far from some winged sea-rover 
Tome. 

Like hope in the distance, 
To silver the sorrow of night 
With her ray, 
103 



104 REVERIE. 

A ghostly existence 
The beacon is glimmering bright 
On the bay. 

Yet little I reckon 
Of music or moonlight redeeming 
The sea; 
Of starlight or beacon. 
My loved one, I only am dreaming 
Of thee. 



IN THE AURA. 

In the marble crypts of the clouds I would lay me to 

sleep. 
Enwrapped in their foaming shrouds I would laugh, I 

would weep 
At the floating dance of my soul like a buoyant feather, 
Where far above in the fire-blue dome of the weather 
Uptossed on the ample pools of its deep- dyed spaces 
Would eddy the maple leaves of the passionate faces 
Who kissed their hearts away in a burnt-out Past; 
And ashen motives of deeds in a stare aghast 
Upthrown to this world of shades from their astral tombs. 
Like wreaths of a curling smoke shall their faint per- 
fumes 
Expand to the rarified hem of the atmosphere. 
And play with its crystal balls; or in anguish peer 
O'er the pale impalpable rim of their magnet globe, 
As they cling with the clutch of fate like a thin silk 

robe 
Round the maddening curve of its limb. And an angel 

star, 
Shot down through the film from nebulous realms afar 
To the central court of the sun, with a long lost fire. 
Would swoon in the white hot tides of the mad desire 

105 



106 IN THE AURA. 

That reeks from the crust of earth, and his wing fade 

gray. 
From my cold calm bier I would snatch at his robe, and 

pray: 
" Dear ray of the cosmic grace like a pale Christ dying ! 
O mated dove of my soul in thy terror flying ! 
Come rest in the down of my nest till the world burns 

up, 
And drink the draft of sin in her whirling cup 
Till the soulless dance dies out for the lack of breath ; — 
For thought, and love, and pity shall outlive Death! " 



SONG OF THE WIND. 

Cheerily, 
Merrily 
Dancing along 
The crest of my song 
Breaks over the lines, 
And foams as it reaches 
The marvellous beaches 
Of dark tossing pines. 
Here I go rushing 
Down into valleys 
Half shadowed over ; 
Brooklets are hushing 
Themselves in the clover 
That laughs at my sallies. 
Here 

Like a deer 
Let me race 
On the prairies, 
With dews for the flowers, 
And diamonds in showers 
To gem the blue face 
Of the dehcate fairies. 
Down in the grass 
107 



108 SONG OF THE WIND. 

Lightly I pass 

Slipping, 

Or dipping 

As a wild bird 

In the trough of a sea, 

Or as a herd 

When bushes are stirred 

Merrily skipping 

Over the lea. 

Kiss me, you wild rose, 

While I embrace. 

Thou art a child, rose ! 

Why should the rush 

Of a pink in a blush 

Come over thy face ? 

Darling, but this is 

The joy of thy kisses : — 

That I may bear 

Thy sweetness of breath 

In a blast of fresh air 

To a chamber of death. — 

Ho ! little swallow. 

Let us both follow 

Into the West 

The car of Apollo 

That rolls to its rest ! — 

Good-night, birch-tree, 

Hie thee to sleep 

Wrapped in thy leaves. 



SONG OF THE WIND. 109 

Why dost thou search, tree ? 

Why dost thou weep 

Where the nightingale Hngers? 

Why wring thy white fingers 

As a maiden who grieves ? — 

Here is a city. 

The lamps are all lighted. 

Poor folks are sighted 

Only by me ; 

Shivering, 

Quivering 

Down by the corners, 

Querulous mourners. 

O what a pity 

Such sadness to see ! — 

Out on the road again. 

Down in the grassy lane. 

There is a country lass 

Milking her cows. 

Plump are her arms. 

Shall I arouse 

Her love or alarms 

By greeting her brows 

With a kiss as I pass ? 

Ha ! There's the moon 

Reigning so lonely ! — 

Let the wench go ; 

She 's in her teens. — 

This is the only 



110 SONG OF THE WIND. 

Empress of night. 

Better to know 

The kisses of queens. 

What do I care 

For the wrath of the fair ? 

Must I bow to her light ? 

Shall I hush in a swoon 

For this lady of air ? 

Nay : — cloudlets grasp her. 

Stars try, but miss her. 

Let me go kiss her. 

I too will clasp her. — 

Rogue of a star, 

You queer little eye 

Of an angel whose gaze 

Is fixed in amaze 

Over the sky ; 

Out with thy gleaming ! 

Wink now, and bellow. 

And turn thyself yellow 

To hear the blaspheming 

Of such a bold fellow ! — 

Good-night, heaven ! 

Farewell, flowers ! 

The clerk of the hours 

Is ringing eleven. 

Earth, good-night ! 

May dreams of pearl 

Weave starry numbers 



SONG OF THE WIND. 11 1 

Into thy slumbers, 
Sweet young girl 
In thy robe of white ! 
All things sleep. 
Now to my rest, 
Rocked on the breast 
Where the wild songs creep 
Of old nurse Ocean. 
Soft be thy motion, 
Wrinkled dame Deep ! 



THE CAPTIVE. 

Have you seen a captive warbler in his gilded cage in 
May 
With his tiny bursting heart against the grating? 
Have you set him where the shadows of the garden 
branches play, 
In whose silken bowers the busy birds are mating ? 
On what joyous cradles of the giddy tossing crests 
Doth he mark them weave their nests ! 
How they chuckle and they snuggle with their little glossy 
breasts, 

Violet scents 
Wafting shy delicious blessings to their leafy bridal tents ! 

Ah, but he 
Beats against the cruel mesh his shattered wing in agony ; 
A wild melodic ecstasy of anguish utters ; 
And like a flaming spirit flutters 
To be free. 
And one tiny yellow maiden on a spray of Hlac poises. 
From her little throbbing throat what luscious noises 
Warble love, and promise of a summer's bliss for him, 
Chirp a dainty kiss for him, 
As she turns her pretty head askance with supple coquetry. 



THE CAPTIVE. 113 

And will she never know the maddening fate that locks 

his cage? 
Doth she not tremble at the elemental grandeur of his 
rage? 

Dear, sweet, unconscious brutes ! 
Unhappy singers ! — 
But weep thou tears of blood, my heart, for distant phan- 
tom fingers 
Fore'er in vain outstretched to pluck thee from thy 
roots ! 



KARMA. 

You never will give me the credit 

For half of the passion I feel. 
My manner was cool when I said it. 

You mistook my refusal to kneel. 
Well, the master of courtlier phrases 

You may have for a beck of your hand. 
But I never shall sell you my praises, 

And I mean when I woo you — to stand. 

What on earth is the use of a lover 

With rose-scented kerchief and breath ? 
Is he bagged like a bevy of plover ? 

Will he swear to adore you till death ? 
Ah, till death ! — He 's a coward, my mistress ! 

It is death he should first have defied ! 
Here I claim you through eons of histories 

Incarnate forever my bride ! 

Can you dimly remember, I wonder. 
On the tremulous breast of the Nile, 

How once you committed a blunder ? 
How your captain was won by a smile? 
114 



KARMA. 115 

How you lay in a bower of spices, 

And maddened his eyes with your charms, 

Till, praying forgiveness of Isis, 
He sank in your passionate arms? 

Well, I clearly recall you at Florence, — 

'T was a cycle of centuries after, — 
How you faced me with eye of abhorrence. 

How you stormed at the scorn of my laughter. 
When you reckoned in impotent fashion 

I would welcome you back to my cottage ; 
You, who bartered a genuine passion 

For a mess of the ducal pottage ! 

O, I 'm fickle ? No doubt, since you know it ! 

Each honey-sweet blossom to enter 
Perhaps is becoming a poet. 

To revolve as a disc on its centre. 
But the heart of a sphere has no motion. 

'T is an ultimate atom, serene 
As the depths of a turbulent ocean. — 

That heart I reserve for my queen. 

There, how would you like me to woo you ? 

Shall I prate of the wonders of science ? 
Shall I come with a summons to sue you. 

Just to see your eyes sparkle defiance ? 
Shall I buy you an exquisite jewel? 

Shall I swear to obey your behest ? 
Shall I damn you as icy and cruel, 

Then weep like a fool on your breast ? 



116 KARMA. 

No doubt you deserve all my damning ! 

I only wish you would damn me, 
And be done with this pitiful shamming. 

I would like you as fierce and as free 
As a tigress, as supple and fearless. 

To dare you, and hold you, and shake you ; 
Or a Mexican mustang peerless. — 

I swear I would mount you, and break you ! 

Nay ; I '11 pluck you a star from its setting, 

And fling it with scorn at your feet. 
I '11 exasperate Mars with my fretting 

Till he lend you the glow of his heat. 
Then I '11 come like a double-ringed Saturn ; 

And congeal you with polar embrace 
Till you spit in your rage at the pattern 

My frost shall imprint on your face. 

Ah, enough ! For I dare you to sever 

That intricate fabric of meshes 
You have woven for once and forever. 

No cycle of spirits or fleshes 
Can stay that insidious leaven. 

It draws us like Fate to its level. 
I will lie on your bosom in heaven ; — 

Or, you '11 go with me to the devil ! 



MAYA. 

Where the willow meshes tremble 

On the bosom of the night; 
And the fire-flies reassemble, 

And in happy dance delight 
With their golden skein a-tangle 
To deceive the stars that spangle, 
Like a universe a-quiver. 
All the surface of the river; — 
Have I seen the subtle vision 

Of a strange unearthly thing 
Peering forth as in derision, 
And an eye as of a creature 

That was crouching for a spring. 
Be it fiend or be it human, 
I could feel each hidden feature 
Had the semblance of a woman. 

For I hear in sudden hushes 

Rustling like the sound of dresses, 

And I see among the rushes 

Lines like tangled coils of tresses. 

And I press upon my eyes 

Where a veil of cobweb lies; 
117 



118 MA YA. 

And my vision seems to dance 
In the mazes of a trance, 
And I tremble like a deer; 
Is it love, or is it fear? 
For the wind comes by and grieves 
Through its harp of summer leaves. 
Where it lifts the willow laces 
Not a sign my fancy traces 
Of the something that I dread 
In the hollow of their bed; — 
Then I pray it to appear, 
When it answers with a leer; 
And the leaves a-laughing shake 
Like the ripples on a lake; 
And it may be curse or kiss, 
But I hear its mocking hiss. 

Once I could not bear the passion 
Which it burned into my soul 
Like an eye of living coal. 
And I cried to it with ashen 
Lips apart, and husky breath, 
" O thou messenger of death. 
Cease this wily necromancy 
Which has spun about my fancy 
Like a web of cruel mesh 
Chains that eat into my flesh ! 
O thou seraph, or thou fiend, 
By thy boughs of willow screened, 



MA YA. 119 

I conjure thee to unveil. 
In the sheen of moonlight pale 
I must see thee, I must know 
All thy hidden bliss or woe ! " 

Then a perfume as of musk 
Seemed to permeate the dusk. 
And I heard the willow whispers 
Sighing like a nun at vespers, 
Like a nun who knows her breath 
Is as sweet as love and death. 
And their leaflets seemed to linger 
Like a soft caressing finger. 
And they tempted me with tips 
Of their passionate young lips. 

Then their branches slowly parted, — 

In the blackness of their space 

Lay a dim uncertain face. 
And its eyes were diamond-hearted. — 
Then I heard a plash and scream 
From the bosom of the stream. 
And the vision paled almost 
To the blankness of a ghost. 
But I shrieked, " Thou shalt not go. 
Thing of evil, child of woe ! 
See, the moon has half-way ploughed 
Through the curtain of yon cloud — 
She shall see thee, she shall tell 
If thy message be from hell ! " 



120 MA YA. 

Then a perfume sweeter, thicker, 
Made the starlight faint and flicker; 
And the dim uncertain feature 
Took the semblance of a creature 
That was beautiful and human. 
For its breath came fast and warm, 
Like a rising summer storm. 
And its spirit turned to mine 
For the madness of a second 
Like the lighting on a pine. 
And its pallid finger beckoned 
Where the willows purred and pressed 
On the lilies of its breast. 
God ! It was living woman. 

Now the sap of spring a-bud 
Leaped like fire in my blood; 
And in broken voice I cried, 
" O my gentle willow bride, 
I have felt thee, I have known 
That my soul was thine alone. 
I have bartered hope of grace 
For this vision of thy face. 
Now the night-mist hardly dims 
All the splendor of thy limbs. 
All this witchery that swerves 
With the passion of its curves! " 



MAYA. 121 

Then I saw no more, or cared; 

For I threw myself possessed 

On the marble of that breast ; — 

When I felt against my ear 

Like a snake her icy cheek, 

And the sting as of a jeer, 

Half in sob and half in hissing; 

And the moon came forth and stared 

Like a white nun pitiful 

At the beauty I had bared. 

At the bosom I was kissing. — 

't was horrible, my shriek! 

1 caressed an empty skull ! 

And the ripeness of those charms 
Fell to ashes in my arms ! — 

Weeping willows, soft your plaint 
Sweeps the moss whereon I faint. 
River rushes, creep and crouch 
O'er the madness of my couch. 
Kiss and curse me once again. 
I forsake the way of men ! 
Rock me sadly in the spell 
Of your witchery of hell. 
For, although I know the worst. 
Still I love that thing accursed ! 



MAYTIME. 

What are the small birds saying? 

That I should go a-Maying? 

"Ah May, May, May, 

Sweet May, sweet May ! 

Do you love May?" 

Thus they forever chirp in carol gay. 

Prithee why should not I, 

Marking their rapturous flight across the sky, 

Echo to thee their spring-tide harmony? 

Do I love May? Sweet birds, 

A blessing for your sympathetic words ! 

Yea : more, far more than you or I can say. 

Tell me, why is it that the name of June 

Hath no such sweet associated tune? 

Is it the hopeful play 

Of possibilities in that coy "May"? 

Perchance June's summer dust 

Would soil the freshness of that "May " with "Must." 

That 's the mistake 

We mortals ever make. 

The shy wild-rose new-blown 

We covet for our own; 

And yet she droops when tied 



MA YTIME. 123 

To some dull stake, a limp defenceless bride. 

No hot-house flower 

Should share my true love's dower! 

Give me the anxious thrill 

That hangs upon an undetermined will ! 

Let May be ever "May," 

And in her girlish freedom laugh and play, 

Nor doff the dainty mien 

Of innocent sixteen. — 

Then shall my pained heart flutter 

Like a sweet bird with love it may not utter; 

Nor know what blossoms hath 

The gracious goddess showered in my path. 

Ah, May dear, draw the curtain 

Over thy smile uncertain. 

For, be it tears that come, 

My sorrow shall be dumb. — 

Yet may I find 

Perchance in some shy nook. 

Betrayed of soft sweet-scented wind, 

A violet by a brook; 

Or one rare trembling white anemone 

No other favored soul shall ever see. 

No one but me 

To catch in fairy dells 

The tinkling of thy highland-lily bells, 

Or watch the pure surprise 

That shimmers in the blue-tipped grasses' eyes. 

Shall I not press my cheek 



124 MA YTIME. 

Upon the daisies of thy fancy meek, 

And let my soul be kissed 

By furry, lithesome things. 

The elemental spirits of the mist, 

That float upon the dandelion's wings? 

May, if I should woo, 
Not as a bee 

With noisy minstrelsy, 

If I should come to you 

As comes a timid white-winged butterfly 

Smiling to live, or smiling still to die, 

What would you do ? — 

Nay sweet, haste not to tell. 

1 would not have you solve the mystic spell. 
The pleasing riddle which the birds are singing. 
In sweet reiteration ringing, 

" O May, May, May, 

Dost love me, May? " 

Ah lack-a-day ! 

What is it I am saying? 

I must be off if I would go a-Maying. 



WITH DEATH. 

When the lamplight dims in a mist of hymns, 
And your sad, sweet glance in a glad trance swims, 
When the tramp of the charging steeds is nigh, 
And my pulse beats faint like a lullaby, 

And I know I must die : — 
In that last sweet sigh, on that vast high brink, 
Where the stainless fly and the sinful shrink, 
What shall my innermost eye descry? 

What shall I think? 

Shall the sad thoughts rush in a mad warm gush ? 
Shall they stand aghast in the chamber's hush? 
And the ghosts of the past creep out and in. 
Bone of my bone, and kin of my kin? 
Shall I see you start with your first warm blush? 
Shall I feel you smart like a wounded thrush? 
Can I draw the dart? Can I heal you? Hush! 
What is done is done; and the shadow of sin 
Lies low with the sun; and they all troop in 

Pitiful visitors one by one. 
Let them crowd to my bedside — let them come. 

They are mine; I shall face them, dumb. 
125 



126 WITH DEATH. 

When the flickering glimmer of the lamp grows dim- 
mer, 
And the pale white lines of the curtain shimmer 
Like a falling shroud, or a robe of cloud; 
When I hear the snort of the chargers loud; 
When a strong voice cries like a trumpet clear 
"O soul, unveil; for at length I am here! " 
With that last weak breath which the hand of Death 
Shall snatch from my lip as he listeneth, 
What shall I cry, what shall reply 
When I know that I die? 

Ah, this, — "Sweet bliss, I have lived, I have died for 

this. 
I have dared thee. Death; I have sued for thy frosty 

kiss. 
I have wooed thee in masterful mood; I have sworn to 

caress 
My infinite bride in my spirit's first nakedness. 
Out of the mists of my brain, and the storm of my 

pain, 
Web of the flesh, and the mesh of the blood-swept vein ! 
Free like a feather to fly through the worlds as they 

crash ! 
I to be I evermore though they crumble to ash ! 
Never a wrath to fear : but a path to be won 
Straight to the blinding light of a nightless sun ! 
Whether He cast me to hell, or fell me to earth; 
Whether of sin I be shriven, or driven again to rebirth; 



WITH DEATH. 127 

111 is the slave of the will ! I shall master it still. 
Love shall not kill, though I drink to the fill of its ill. 
Nothing shall daunt me : — not taunt of the damned as 

they chant. 
Only weak purpose to fear, and the cold pale fears as 

they haunt. 
This is the self-made sting; this is the cursed thing: — 
To mutter the palsied doubt, to flutter with listless wing. 
To creep like an icy snake in the grass of a sordid 

thought; 
Never a passion to sin for, never a bliss to be fought, 
Never a hell to be welcomed! — Then come to me, 

Death, though I burn. 
Flames shall be quenched in our love, and God, He 

shall feel how we yearn. 
And Mother Mary shall sit like a queen mild-eyed, 
And wash the foam from my lips, my merciful bride; — 
For gladly She loved Her Beloved, and sadly She loved 

till He died." 



SPRING BREATH. 

Like secret emerald sheens that hide in the froth of a 

wave, 
So reincarnate greens from the drifts of their wintry 

grave 
Have felt the breath of a spring as sweet as the pulsing 

blood 
When a maiden plumes her wing, and love swells red in 

the bud. 
The snows shall melt like a cloud, and their ghosts come 

back in the rain; 
And the mountains thunder-browed shall frown on the 

timid plain. 
But the feet of the shy blue maids that hide in the 

withered leaves 
Shall bathe in the brooks of the glades, and dance in the 

mossy eaves 
Of friendly giant rocks with their wonderful blurred 

gray eyes; 
And the curls of the soft fern locks unfold to the kiss of 

the skies. 
And down where a smoke-like smell lies low in the 

atmosphere 
Is heard the song of a bell with the tinkle of silver clear 

128 



SPRING BREATH. 129 

From the cool wet sponge of a shade; and the mouth of 

a shy pink cup, 
Like a naked child afraid, for a draught of the dew looks 

up. 
O rare anemone, like a pale pearl shell from a stream. 
With the grace of a maiden free, and a firm green wing 

like a dream 
Of the clustered emerald sprays round the new-born 

gem of a soul; — 
See now through the crystal grays where the heart of an 

oriole 
Hath drowned its orange throbs in the mirror soul of 

the brook; 
And with sympathetic sobs the frightened violets look 
Aghast at the sight of blood. But fear is as fragrant 

as death, 
And fairies faint at the flood of this delicate maiden 

breath. 
And the squirrel rubs his eyes, and scans the world 

from his chinks; 
And the mottled wild duck flies from the sly gray lair 

of the lynx. 



IN NORWAY. 

Soul of my fathers, 
Soul of black mountains, 
Soul of gnarled forests, 
Soul of hoarse trumpets. 
Soul of world-thunder ; — 
Soul, be the fissure 
Rent for my gaze ! 

Thence shall I ponder 
Midnights of revel, 
Wolves of gray hunger. 
Flames of salvation's 
Martyrdom, triumph. 
Churns of mad struggle. 
Curses of love. 

These are my birthright ; - 
Here in the northland 
Crags of the ice-gods ; 
Nest of gaunt heroes ; 
Cradle of sea-hounds. 
Serpents of vikings, 
Doves of the skalds. 
130 



IN NORWAY. 131 

Still doth the North Sea 
Hurl on the granite 
Helms of thy headlands 
Barbs of white thunder. 
Still through the blue wave 
Dip the gray petrels, 
Sea-gulls of ships. 

Into thy caverns 
Hollowed in mountains 
Breathless I wander ; — 
Frosty with jewelled 
Drops of the moonlight, 
Ghostly with echoes, 
Turquoise their floor. 

Sprays of Aurora 
Blaze to the ceiling. 
Brackets of jasper 
Hold the steel arches. 
Rafters of crimson, 
Tiles of green lightning, 
Studs of gold stars. 

Harpstrings of sagas 
Weird in your passion, 
Pulsing with luminous 
Snarls of the demons, 



132 IN NORWAY. 

Faint with caressing 
Breath of white maidens, 
Pure in your prayers ! - 



You have your power still. 
Still do I hear you 
Shriek your shrill voices 
In the death-grapple, 
In the ice cracking, 
In the sea moaning, 
In the ghosts' cries. 

Nurse of the rime-frost ; 
Gray sky and misty 
Skirt of wild she-gods, 
They that beheld me 
Borne to my cradle 
Like a young eagle 

From their hoar nests ! 



Thou hast an infinite 
Thirst in thy bosom ; 
Blood for the daring, 
Ghmpse of vast values 
Toppling for heroes. 
Whirls of mad kisses. 
Wombs of dark life. 



IN NORWAY. 133 

O when the thunder 
Crumbles old mountains' 
Craggy gray castles ; 
O when the lightning 
Stabs her red war-blades 
Through thy ripe bosom 
Shrinking like curds ; — 

Then do I know him 
Tyrant of Titans, 
Thor the god-conqueror, 
Twisting the iron 
Dome of the elements, 
Hurling hot satellites 
Chained to his glove. 

Yea, and he sweepeth 
Far to the southward, 
Whirling cloud-castles 
Down the horizon, 
Lit like a rumbling 
Crater of ruin 

Lost in the sea : — 

While to the zenith 
Frosty and quiet 
Tips of sharp diamonds 
Shatter pale lances. 



134 IN NORWAY. 

Shoals of thin nebulae 
P'roth with the beakers 
Of their star-wine. 

Halls of the North-dawn 
Crusted with garnets, 
Sardon, and beryl ! — 
Into blood-ruby 
Foam thy green goblets, 
Trail through wan purple 
Pearls of milk-blue. — 



Hence with these visions : - 
Meteor glances 
Split by the icy 
Spar of the present ! 
Fling them like dew-drops 
Into the ocean, 
Whither ye flee ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

A SYMPHONIC POEM. 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

A SYMPHONIC POEM. 

FIRST MOVEMENT. 
®:6e Sea antj tjje Skg. 

Blast of disruption triumphant ! Wail of the travail of 
Time! 
Shudder of terrified worlds in the glare of the sun of 
the new ! 
Thrills of the joy of creation! Potence of prophets 
sublime ! 
Faces in dust to be lifted, and crowned with the stars 
of the true ! 

Crowns of the stars like wreaths 

On the lap of the midnight sky. 
And the sympathetic ocean breathes 

With the swell of a smothered sigh. 
Stars like the fallen leaves 

That in autumn die, 

137 



138 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

On the lap of the sea as it heaves 

With a death-foreboding cry. 
But angels glorious, deathless, 
Gaze from the windows of heaven breathless 

On bird-like ships that are floating by. 

" O mocking, sighing, treacherous sea, 
Whisper thy fathomless secret to me." 

Then the coo 
Of a soft wind blew. 
And a shiver ran up to the flag at the masthead 

high; 
And the blast of disruption blew, and the night wailed 

loud in her pain. 
And the stars hid under a cloud that was heavy and blue 
with rain. 

And the small waves writhed as they came, 

Writhed like the wreaths of a flame, 

Like the luminous, drifting breath 

Of a wraith in the chamber of death; 

And their pleadings fell 

With the moans of a petalled shell, 

As they curled with purrings and hisses 

Their warm lips bubbling with kisses. 

Rolling in tremulous eagerness 

Of an amorous siren's soft caress 

For this second Ulysses. 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, 139 

But he cried in his agony, 
"Away with thy cursed lips, O sea! 
And thy snaky fingers of weeds 
That reach from the sleeve of thy frothing beads ! 
Echo no more the voice 
Of our weakening spirit's choice ! 
Heaven knows that we yearn 
For the secret impossible bliss of return. 
But the flame of an inward fire 
Burns fiercer than tenderest heart's desire, 
A fire that feeds 

On the very anguish of wonderful deeds. 
Begone, I say ! Make way, make way. 
In the name of the Lord ! 
With His cross on my sword, 
I carve from this doubt and temptation 
A path through thy sheer desolation ! " 

Then the balm 

Of a perfect calm 

Fell over the passionate seas; 

A fragrant calm 

Like the hush of a psalm. 

That hangs on the boughs of the cocoanut trees, 

That hides in the heart of a great cool palm. 

Where the coral harps like bended moons 

Echo forever the splendid tunes 

That float on the dreams of the broad lagoons. 



140 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Then the flying fish 
Arose, and sped with a sudden dash 
Like the shivering line of a lightning flash, 
And sank again with a joyous plash; 
Like golden shuttles in silver mesh. 
Like love that leaps to the burning flesh; 
Again and again, like the throb of a fresh young 
wish. 

O wish that no god may know ! 

O throb of despair and delay ! 

O sob of another dying day ! 

O faith that flies like shaft from a bow. 

Then sinks again in the floods of woe ! 

Then cried he in deeper pain : — 

" O last faint flutter of hope, thou shalt not fail ! 

Breathe, breathe again 

Into the pallid cheek of my despondent sail 

The shell-hued glinting of thy gleeful gale ! 

Respond, respond, 

O holy universal Mother of the seas beyond ! 

O brooding Dove, breathe inspiration fair; 

Be it through lightnings of the summer air 

That kisses warm 

With furious fevered breath. 

Or be it in the utmost throes of tropic storm; 

Even in Death, 

Reveal, reveal thy form ! " 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 141 

Hark! 
A sudden shriek in the dark ! 
A whistle that shoots to the peak ! 
A darkness that sweeps to the deck ! 
A crash like a wreck ! 
O blast of disruption triumphant ! O wail of the travail 
of Time ! 
And the backs of the green waves break; 
And the stout beams crackle and creak; 
And the keels roll weak, 
And reel in the cavernous wake 
Of a violet lightning streak. 
Shudder of terrified worlds in the glare of the lightning 
sublime ! 

Shuddering rumble of thunder drums ! 

Wailing flutes of the hurricane ! 

Trailing beards of the matted rain ! 
Suns that crumble in blinding crumbs ! 

Hist! 

Whistling from water-snakes' nests, 

Pestiferous, 

Vociferous ! 

Sulphurous gulfs ! 

Rushing of selfless elf s ! 

Restless cresting of helpless breasts ! 

Shifting rifts of the hapless mist ! 



142 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

And ever the shrouded form 

Of the great gaunt god of the storm, 

With eyes as of skulls 

That shine in the lulls, 

And fingers with skin like a wing. 

That cling to the hair 

With the clutch of despair. 

As foul sea-claws to a drowned corpse cling! 

O blast of disruption, and utter diremption ! 

O shudder of doubt that is passing the bonds of dimen- 
sion! 
O mental and physical tension 

Of terrified worlds that are hurled as if lost to redemp- 
tion! 

Disruption ! Distortion ! 
Destruction ! Abortion ! 

Worry, and murmur, and motion of scurrying currents ! 

Tearing, and perilous tossing of turbulent torrents ! 

Murderous horror, and crossing of error with terror ! 

Scoff of the physical surf like a breath on the psychical 
mirror ! 

Mist-driven broods of the ocean like moods of our 
mystical nature ! 

Railing and blare in the tempest, and wail and despair- 
ing of travail ! 

Thrills of creation in glare of the wills of the powers of 
evil! 

Swords that shall leap with the hour to the hearts of 
creator and creature ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 143 

"Ah peace, peace! 
Santa Maria, peace ! 
Let the wild torture of this fury cease ! 
Yea, on this watery desert have I fasted, and sung thy 

praise 
A thousand times over a Lenten season of forty nights 

and days. 
Unmoved on the lofty tower o£ thy purposes dim I 

stood. 
Lust, and Ambition, and Doubt, and Fear swept by in a 
hurricane brood. 
But I was not, I am not strong. 
How long, O Mother of our Lord, how long 
Shall I be hammered as molten steel in the forge of this 
scourger's mood?" 

O first unwelcomed foreigner! 
O last unconscious mariner ! 
See, through the swift unravelling fringe of the shattered 
clouds 

Light breaks. 
Fragments of mist are swirling like lost bewildered 
flakes. 
The stars are swimming in scattered crowds. 
Tossed on the breast of heaven what waif is this from 
the wreck? 
What messenger of hope alights upon thy shrouds? 

A small brown speck 
Helpless it falls, it flutters to the deck. 



144 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

O thrill of a prophecy dying! O flutter of winged 
wish! 
" Nay; — 't is only a flying fish 
Hapless thrown up 
From the lip of the ocean's frothing cup." 
"O comrade mine, what is 't? What is't? — It 

stirred ! 
It cannot be — Jesu beloved, dare I lisp the word ? — 
It cannot be, I say, — 
Great God, make way I 
A small land bird! " 

There it lies with heart a-tremble, 

Plumage torn by fire and hail; 
While earth's boldest sons assemble 

Weeping o'er its body frail: — 
Even as angel choirs are weeping 

Round some stricken tortured soul 
Freed from storms of sin, and sleeping 

At its last unconscious goal. 

So flies the blessed dove with olive bough 
To thee, lone wanderer on a world-wide ark. 

So shall the smile of God direct thy prow 
To some new Ararat across the dark. 
Thence shall thine eyes behold again the sight 
That flashed on Moses from Mount Pisgah's height. 

Look up, for soon shall break upon thy brow 

What Israel's chieftain led, a pillar of fire by night. 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 145 

How calm and how sweet the night ! 
How fresh and how pure the sea ! 
And the cool salt air like a thing of delight 
Sweeps over the soul as a wing in flight, 
And the sky is barred by the caging bright 
Where hope is beating her plume to be free. 
Thrills of the joy of creation in potence of prophecy 
new! 
And the stars new washed like a crown of leaves 

Are held in the arms of the virgin sky, 
Are raised by the royal love that heaves 
The loyal heart of the tiptoe wave 
At the new-found kiss of a master brave, 
Of her true-found prince who is sailing by. 
Heroes on high to be lifted, and crowned with the stars 
of the true ! — 

Yes, the true, — 
And the new, — 
Lapped by two great infinities of blue; 
Wrapped in the vapors of the cosmic dew. 



O thrill of the joy of creation! 

O will of the mood of devotion ! 

O prophecy potent of ocean ! 

O stars of the crown of salvation ! 
Penitent lifting of faces to infinite graces ! 
Permanent drifting of planets to ultimate places ! 



146 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Potency patent of dust on the brow of the just! 
Latent devotion of trust to the new she embraces ! 

But hark ! 
What was spoken ? 
Was it the throb of yon spark 
That cuts like a Damascene blade to the dome of the 
dark? 
Has the heart of a white star broken? 
Was it the whisper of distance? Was it the blinding 
roar 
Of wedges of light that are splitting the sky to the 
ocean's floor; 

Even as solid edges of proud Vesuvius split 
In the rage of a lava-fit, 
When the glorious crimson blood spurts through with 
a hiss 
The red ripe wound of each orifice? 

O pillars of light that are lifting the glare of the glorified 
ceiling, 

O fierce arabesques of the stars as they leap in antiphonal 
passion, 

O shaft of the uttermost steeple that reels with the mad- 
ness of feeling. 

Here shower thy blazing cathedral on the corpse of this 
universe ashen ! 

Rise in thy architectonic splendor of radiant fires 
From the womb of creative desires ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 147 

On the combing wave of thy crystal dome now set 
The diamond jet 
Of each sparkling minaret, 
Pouring like infinite golden foam from the torches of 
molten spires ! 

Let each tongue of flame 
Have an individual name, 
A voice effervescent, 
Evanescent, 
Swept from the floor to the roof in a paean incessant; 
As of luminous souls 
In the joy of their self-won force, 
Each on the tremulous wedge of a rocket's course 
From the vortices shot of the duplicate cosmic poles ! 

What gossamer network of comets' tails 
Shrouds heaven in rainbow veils ! 

Pulsing in changeable gold on the breast of this astral 
chameleon. 

Filaments scattered like crowns of enamel on walls of 
Alhambra, 

Orbital laces of loops on the centres of darker penum- 
bra, 

Flashing of manes from the chargers in star-clustered 
perihelion ! 

Yet these soft skeins of astral floss 
Waving like beards of incandescent moss 
Of a sudden condense 



148 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

By some centripetal master influence. 

Earth's breath is held, 
As when in the gloomy slime of chaotic eld 
The atoms huddled in blank amaze 
At the soul-searching gaze 
Of the first created sun. 
So now, on this altar of night 
Blazes anew that sacramental light 
For a day's work done. 
Four-armed it lies, 
A blinding prophecy in the central skies; 
A cross ! 



How calm the night ! How free 
After this meteoric ecstasy ! 
The world is still 
With fixity of faith, and deep untroubled will : — 
Faith in the infinite blue spirit of the sky, 
Will in the infinite true bosom of the sea. 
Purposes unclouded, and the goal like a star set firm; 
Time but a gentle bride in Creation's fond embrace. 
Kiss of a hero who lifts the veil from a virgin's face ! 
Goddess-birth from the foam of the sea at the God- 
appointed term ! 

Ah, hero, weep — 
In the happy dreams of thy sleep. 
Pillowed on folds of rosy-hued idea 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 149 

On the deck of the Santa Maria. 

Sail on, and dream 
In the molten glow of this steady tidal stream 

That bears thee sure 
To worlds more wonderful and pure 

Than thou canst deem. 

And now on the tossing edges of the East 
A higher wave of molten silver flashes, 
Flashes a moment, and dashes 
Like spray by the stars to be kissed. 
Nay, nay, 
'T is not wave-mist. 
'T is a star that thou hast not seen; 

For it flashes keen 
With a diamond light increased. 
And it comes to stay. 
'T is a wave,— 't is a star, — 't is an arch, — 
'T is the chord of a harp a-tune. 
It wafts thee a secret thy fancy hath never heard. 
'T is a luminous golden orb with expanding wing. 
It shakes the sea from its breast as a king-like bird. 
'T is the saintly, impersonal moon. 

As a godlike thing 
With solemn and dignified motion 
She rises, — she leaps, — she is free. 
She soars away on the constellated march 

Of the deathless Zodiac. 
Her parting smile irradiates the ocean. 



150 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 



It lies in the foaming wake of thy perilous track. 
It beckons thee onward, not back, 
'T is thy pillar of fire by night. 
And so, with her virginal kiss on thy brow, 
Slumber thou, 
Dream thou now 
Of the ultimate Light ! 



SECOND MOVEMENT. 
ISreams. 

O PEARLY themes that flutter like beams of the moons, 
O languid dreams that swoon in the arms of the noons, 
Like perfumes of blossoms that toss on the roses of 

bosoms, 
Like spice-winds that pillow their sighs in the tresses of 

willow ! 
Like a passionate prayer from the lips, like a star from 

eclipse 
Roll into the peace of the soul as a liquid diamond slips 
Down cool green lotus leaves to the flame of the budding 

tips! 
As their ruby hearts unfold to the warm noon gold, 
Shell within shell unrolled, like a secret told 
By a virgin bride without fear in a lover's ear; — 
So, themes of his delicate dreams, expand in gleams 
Of glorified visions that twine as a garland of vine; 
Thought that shall leap from a thought as flame from a 

name, 
Rays that are written on Time as a blaze that came, 
As a blinding blast that shot from the womb of the past. 
And pierced like a peerless star through the future 

far; — 

151 



152 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Death in the bloom, like a child that shall dance on a 

tomb ; — 
Faith that hath kissed the blue mist in the dome of the 

vast. 

But see, he hath plunged in its sphere 
As a joyful boy in the cool green floods of a mere. 
His soul is light as the wings of a dragon-fly 
That leisurely dances by. 

He stands by the dark gray gates of a city now; 
And over the wreath of smoke that fringes the brow 
Where castles cling like an oak to the crumbling crag. 
Mid rumble of distant drums and the thunder of guns 
He marks with a breathless hope where the sudden light- 
ning runs 

Of a Christian flag; — 
Flag that hath leaped from its faith, as a flame from a 

name. 
O imperial name that is written in deathless flame ! 

Hark, 't is the drums! and a dark line comes 
With a trumpet peal o'er a wave of steel; 
Where the heroes march in a wide blue arch. 
And the chargers prance in a stately dance. 
Each knight sits light with his thin steel lance 
Mid banners in lanes of the ribboned manes; 
And strict in time to the martial chime 
A loud hymn reigns o'er the proud glad plains. 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 153 

"I see afar the blaze of the jewelled tents 
In circling zones, 
And in the midst twin thrones 
Like new-born stars on the startled firmaments." 

Hark to the fife, like a thin keen knife 

That cuts steel ranks on the Genii's banks 

For a queen set light on a charger white. 

In a deep black band the turbaned stand, 

And bow to the sweep of her lifted hand; 

While the stern chiefs come like Titans dumb 

To the low sad tap of the Moorish drum. 

That her glove may seize on the world's gold keys. 

" In this vast camp of Spain 
Where plumes of knights are tossing like a crested 

main. 
And coronets of swords shall leap with diamond tip, 
And forests of bowed heads shall dip 
At curse or smile on royal Isabella's lip, 
I come to grasp the silken tangles of the rein. 
Ah, not in vain 
These years of cold disdain ! 
I would have choked my pride. 
For one sweet smile I would have crouched and died. 
But now all glorified 
She reigns the mistress of the universes wide; 

And I shall kneel, and cry : — 
'O gracious lady who hast bid me die, 



154 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

The Lord divine 
Now consecrates me for His own and thine.' 

"Still cold and dumb? 
I hear the heart-beat of a muffled drum, 
The wailing of a dirge for heroes dead. 

And dust is on my head ! 

"O blinding blast from the open tomb of the past! 
Would that again I could rest on my mother's breast! 
Would I could lie where the strife of these years should 

die, 
And innocent kneel in the spells of the village bells ! 

"And yet I knew; and yet I dimly guessed 
When as a guileless boy 
I climbed the steep Ligurian cliffs in lusty joy. 
And gazed far off upon the dimpled breast 
Of blue-eyed seas that slumbered in the West. 
For was I not compelled 
As by a great hand held 
To gaze, and gaze, and gaze 
Through tender brooding miles of purple haze. 
Till soft-winged isles 
Seemed lifting orange bosoms to the sun's last smiles, 

And my light will, a feather free, 
Was blown like a trembling bird far out to sea 
By storm-winds, Alpine-brewed, of passionate proph- 
ecy? 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 155 

" When calling to the straying goats 
That scrape and browse 
Where silver-coated olive groves in sunshine drowse, 

Or climb in bleating flocks 
For verdant vales that smile among the splintered rocks, 
I heard strange notes 
Whispered in siren tones from distant dancing boats. 
At first in fear I hid. 
Then, as in trance, not knowing what I did, 
I snatched the iron cross from my panting breast; 
That cross my mother hung 
To keep me ever innocent and young. 
It clung to me as if it were a hand that tenderly caressed. 
But with one parting, burning kiss . 
I stood, and flung it to the ether's vast abyss. 
Far down I marked it like a circling flame 
Sink sunlike in the wave. 
'O God! ' I cried, ^ whose sweet torn martyred frame 

Thy Virgin Mother gave 
The fierce relentless worlds to pacify and save, 

I '11 follow Thee, 
Thou Master who canst walk upon the sea ! 
Whether from pole to pole 
Thou lead'st my consecrated soul; 
Be it to jungle heats of tropic noons that tell 
Of the despair of hell. 
Or to the caps of Hyperborean ice 
That crush a starving world in hardening crests of vice,. 
Or where vast silent lands lik*e unexpected grace 



156 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

May glorify the timid ocean's face, 
Be it for gain or loss, 

I '11 follow thee 
Into that unknown sea. 
My Cross ! ' 

"Ah, then I felt 
A darkness like a belt 
Drawn close around me as in ecstasy I knelt. 
And a slow disappointing chill 
Like torture crept to the heart of my yearning will. 
And then I knew, as now, 
That I must die as Thou 
On crumbling naked plains 
Outside the city walls where ignorance reigns; 
Alone, misunderstood, despised, condemned, in chains." 

Death in new bloom, like a child that shall dance on a 
tomb! 

Ah, cross of my doom, let me die with my Lord in the 
gloom ! 

Yet, Faith, thou hast kissed the blue mist in the dome 
of the vast. 

O, fall like a peerless star that is clear to the last ! 
******** 

" But now for the. daring of deeds ! — Where these des- 
olate piles 

Of rat-haunted, moss-planted wharves are complaining 
for miles; 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 157 

Where the blanched and decrepit old salt like a ghost 

lingers still 
With his tales of the glory of eld, till he pales at his 

story of ill; 
Where the mighty facades of old Genoa painted like 

skies 
Are but trappings that deck a dead bride on the strand 

where she lies; — 
I can view like a seer, I can feel as a soul with new 

senses 
The East beating in as a spice-laden breeze that con- 
denses, 
Where the forests of masts bear the fruit of the opulent 

marts. 
And ships are like girls at a fair, and the world all ablaze 

with her arts. 
And the scar-smitten men are like Argonauts newly 

returned 
With the foam of the sea on their lips, and the blood in 

their veins as it burned. — 
But visages turbaned and dark, and scimetars curved like 

a moon 
Have swept with their Turcoman wrack as a storm on a 

hidden lagoon. 
And the heroes and ships are no more ; and the story of 

yore 
Is heard in the streets like the echo of surf on a shore. 



158 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

" But, my Lord ! 
O my drowning, my crucified Lord ! 
That this torrent of devils abhorred 
Should dishonor the shrine of Thy grave ! 
What is gold, what is art, what is fame 
In the curse of this shame to Thy name? 
With Thy summons to save 
I could rush through the world like a breath of avenging 

flame ; 
I would dare the vile monsters of seas where a ship never 

strayed; 
I would carve me a way through the void with my blood 
on my blade 

In the stress of that blessed crusade ! 



"But, behold! 
There is need of the gold 
To bid for the charter of kings, and to mellow the hearts 
of the cold. — 
Through the sea ! Through the paths of the sea ! — 
And hath He not beckoned me on to a mission untold? — 

Through the sea to the West ! — Can it be ? — 
Through the West to the East ! — O my God, through the 

darkness to Thee ! 
Where the roofs are ablaze with the wealth Thou hast 

stored for my fee ! 
Where even the Khan in his tents shall hail me with 
bend of the knee ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 159 

And the rays of the midnight sun behold like a pageant 

unrolled 
Where the curtains of time are upfurled o'er the stage of 

a unified world ! 



" O themes of my passionate dreams, expand in the gleams 
Of these glorified visions that whirl like a cloud in a 

pearl, 
Where thought follows thought as a flame that shall swirl 

from a flame. 
As a prophecy written on time, as a burning star for an 

aim. 
Thy Star of the East that hath shot from the tomb of the 

past. 
And pierced like a lance through the bar of the ocean 

far. 
And sent me my faith like a star in the dome of the 

future vast ! — 

" O, but how slow is time ! How cold, how slow 
My white-haired tides of effort ebb and flow ! 
How like a baffled mist I flutter to and fro ! 

With restless questionings 
I chase the mocking phantoms of my kings. 

With straining eye 
I trace on endless maps the outlines of my misery. 

What gain to me 
To follow hollow-eyed the shifting contour of the sea? — 

Not to the South 



160 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Where foam the heated tides from Niger's mouth 
I 'd steer these foolish ships. — 
My needle dips 
Forever to the West where fancy slips 
Down endless planetary slopes, 
And in the bitter sea of disappointment gropes 
The wreckage of my hopes. 



"Yet once, when near the pole, 
A strange aurora stole 
Over the frosty darkness of my soul. 

On Thule's strands 
Where Hekla like a priestess lifts gray hands 
Out of the crystal tent in which she stands, 
A wondrous thing 
I heard a poet sing 
Of islands in the West where blooms perpetual Spring, 
Where suns at midnight shine 
O'er vales of golden vine, 
And gods and heroes press the nectar of their wine. — 

O for that liquid gold ! — 
But now the juicy body of my will grows old. 

The vines and veins of hope run deathly cold. 
I think the evening bell of my lost faith hath tolled. 



"Ah, toll, sweet bell! 
Toll, toll 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, 161 

Forever as a balm to some excruciated soul; 
Sweet bell, whose surges swell 
Like dancing lights upon the waters of a stagnant dell, 
Like visions of a saint in penitential cell ! 
Toll 
Well 
Where surges roll 
In a dirge's knell! 
Read as a creed from a scroll 
The secrets thy sobbings tell ! 

Roll 
To the uttermost steadfast pole 
Of a Christian martyr's goal ! 

Swell 
As the cold white mornings stole. 
As the shivering sunlight fell 
When the Christ was vainly mocked by the litanies of 
hell! 

Bell 

Toll, 

Swell, 

Roll, 

It is well 

For the soul ! 

Now high to the roof fling the spears of thy leaping 

spell ! 
Now low at the base of the tomb lay the fears and the 
years of our dole ! — 



162 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

" But, fierce as a river that scoffs at the bondage of chains, 
And proud as the ghost of a cloud that rides over the 

plains, 
I mock at thee, bells; at the shock of your insolent yells. 
I crave no relief. Let me quaff to the full of my grief ! 
Let me clasp her and kiss her, my sorrow, and laugh at 

her sting ! 
Like a knife let her cut to my life ! Let my parted lips 

cling 
To the darling keen edge of the sword of Despair, and 

be wrapped in her hair ! — 



" O bell, like a passionate prayer, like a star from eclipse. 
Like the dancing of lights in the misty white marsh of a 
dell. 

Toll, toll, sweet bell, and roll 
O'er the peace of the world, as a liquid diamond slips 
Down cool green leaves to the blood of these foaming 
lips ! 

Read as a screed from a scroll 
The secrets thy throbbings tell. 
Like a sobbing saint in his cell; 
Shell within shell inrolled, like a sin untold 
By a penitent maid in the fear of a master's ear ! — 
Lips for the knife, though it cut to the heart of my life ! — 
Faith that hath kissed the sweet strife like the tears of a 
star through the mist ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 163 

"O Faith! Faith! Faith! O thou soul which art freed 

from a wraith ! 
Though the body lie cold, and the bells of thy dirge be 

tolled, 
Upspringing, ou twinging, with a joy like a skylark 

singing; 
Spurning the mourning, the scourge of calamity scorning, 
Hearing but wedding-bells ringing, and burning with 

light of the morning, 
Breathing sweet perfumes of blossoms that cross on the 

meekness of bosoms. 
Proud as the prance of a steed that rides over a cloud ! 
I cling like a waif of the sea to the skirt of thy 

shroud, 
Like a sailor a-sea in the surf to a rock that is browed 
By the sad white smile of a dove as she flies to her 

love; — 
Like a dove as she flies to the breast of her God in the 

skies; 
Like a love as it lies in the depths of two beautiful 

eyes : — 
To my Faith let me rise ! Let me leap to the star of my 

prize! — 
On this altar of light where the tapers are burning all 

night. 
And the pillars of shades lie about in the dark colon- 
nades. 
Where the sense with sweet savor is dim, and the silence 

lies pure like a hymn. 



164 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

I shall vow to Thee, bountiful Christ, like a prince of 

the blood I shall shower 
The wealth of the world on Thy tomb, and the bloom of 

my strength for Thy dower ! 

" O Faith, my soul is swept in thy whirling clasp. 
And twined with the spiral flame of a distant bell 
Into some vast new plane of pure white thought. I 

grasp 
Earth's crystal secrets, crowns of thorns in many a 

martyr's cell. 
And naked facts, like startled souls at the trump of 
doom, 
Leaving their body of tangled lies in the tomb, 
Gaze at me earnestly face to face 
In this far cool focus of space. 
Suns turn, and spurn, and burn 
Like sacred jewels each set in a silver urn. 

Stars whirl and swirl 
In their pathway of diamond-powdered pearl; 
Each planet lifting her dainty aural robes 
From the trailing dust of the globes 
With the swift wide-skirted swing of a joyful dancing 
girl. 

Across blue oceans of Nothing 
Currents of pale magnetic rivers are seething and 
frothing; 
Thought, like a soul-spun gauze 
Of cometary laws, 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 165 

Weaving eternal bands, 
As the flush on the cheek of the cold North maid expands, 
Without hurry or pause. 
And cool, and far, 
And still, 
Seated like Fate in a fixed gold car, 
Somewhere in the nebulous wake of the polar star. 
With His little finger that pulls as a primal will 
God sweeps the orderly skeins 
Of the cobweb reins 
That hold the worlds in the netted leash of inexorable 

chains; — 
And every winged mote like a needle speeds to those 
silent lanes. 

"And Earth, 
Dear, sweet, round, horned cup of the waxing Earth, 
Blessed as the focal choice of the Christ for birth. 

An open book thou art spread; 
Each deed of thine a potent prophecy writ large in red; 
Each second a seed of infinite fruit or weed that shall 

spread and spread; 
Each soul a trickling dainty theme self-sung on a timid 
reed. 
Until the heart-burst of its melody is freed 
Into the wild chromatic rush of a symphony overhead ! 
And thou, dark slippery slope of a sea unstable 
That would, if it could, obliterate 
The encausted record-stroke of Fate; 



166 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Thou foolish flirt, whom the strong true core of this ball 

holds firm 
To the bed of an endless hymeneal term, 
The numbered arcs of thy bond are graven as if on a 

silver table ! 

" O Christ, how every dotted island teems 
With the potent agonizing bliss of Thy dying dreams ! 

All far-blown faces, and races, and spaces 
Are merged like drops in the omnipresent sea of Thy 

luminous graces : — 
Dwarfed Ethiopians who dare the furnace of sand- 
choked wind, 
And dark soft-spoken ruby-merchants from the templed 

rivers of Ind, 
And moon-bosomed languid Arabian girls that sigh for a 

kiss as they play 
In broken notes like a sob on the zither at close of 

day. 
And yellow fur-clad gentlemen that hawk with the tented 
Khan, 

Or in fish-scale armor covetous scan 
The blue of the rifted sea that hides the gold-towered 
roofs of Japan; — 

All these. 
And as many more as the shrunken earth may please. 
Thine anointed Admiral shall seize. 
And lead to the tomb-throned capital of Thy Monarchy 
of Man ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 167 

, "O pray, pray, pray, 
Thou sobbing cathedral bell with thy tones of earth's 

sombre gray, 
Now shot with the throbbing of bursting stars, now dark 

with the doom of dismay ! 
I kneel in the gloom of the flickering wax, and the saints 

on the altars sway; 
And the shadows creep with the promise of sleep. — But 

thy clarion cries 'Away! ' 
I leap to my feet with a sword in thy beat; and the cold 

white kiss of the day 
Slips in through a door like a ghost on the floor. — The 

friars are coming to pray. 

O pray, pray, pray. 
Dear peaceful golden souls enwrapped in the hood of 

earth's sombre gray. 
Whose tidal dreams of bridal themes breathe love in a 

fleshless ray ! 

My passion blends with God's pure ends. 
Where prayer like a folded air ascends. 



"Peace, infinite, deep, 
Lies in the arms of Resignation, like a babe asleep. 
'T is not these earthly prayers alone. 
I hear sweet choirs who hymn pure bliss at the foot of 
the throne." 



168 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

O glorious themes of their faith like the crimson of lotus 

blossoms ! 
O pure white petals of folded hands on the crystal mir- 
rors of bosoms ! 
O priceless pearls from their lips ! O flames from their 

finger-tips ! 
Roll over the face of his soul as a diamond tear-drop 

slips : — 
Prayer within prayer unrolled, as the word God told 
Of eternal love in the dear sweet shell of the Virgin's 

ear! 
Roll into the peace of the world, as the soft gray dawn 

that stole 
Round the crucified Saviour's head, and sang as an Easter 

aureole, 
When the faces of angels came, and smiled, and kissed 

the pang from His soul ! 



THIRD MOVEMENT. 
«etitiing iJHusic. 

If in melody 
Pure truth were spoken, 
If on harps of glee 
All dark-eyed falling rays to shimmering stars were 
broken, 

Then were things 
Flames with wings 
Lightly in one another floating, as a skylark sings. 
Yes, each ripe morn 
Blown from a silver horn 
Would wreathe itself in harmony of love for souls new 
born; 

Each heart-drop sorrow-drawn 

Would melt 
As crystal flute-notes felt 
In pulse of dove-like flight o'er buoyant symphonies of 
dawn. 

So star-browed angels fly 
On wings of echoing notes 
To some far Alpine call of a hero's horn that floats 
Down blue-lit corridors of sky; 
169 



170 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Fly in wide sympathetic rings, and pause, and hark 
To the new-strung chorded rim of the ocean's arc 
Where three white ships like breathless swallows are 
skimming by. 

As when moons 
Through flooded heaven 
Trail trumpet-petalled tunes 
In silver tendrils o'er the diamond trellis of the astral 
seven, 

So this flight 
Of a tragic night 
Flashes a radiant message to the farthest nebulae of 
light; — 

Yea, unseen spheres 
Sweeps in its song of years 
For crested choral hosts aflame with their organ-pipes of 
spears. 

Spears of auroral rose 

That quiver 
Like sunsets on a river. 
Or the crimson-hearted song that bursts when a lotus 
blossom blows. 



O listening silver sphere, 
What do you hear 
When the round blue shell of the universe is curled at 
your ear? 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 171 

What have the comets done 
To the lips of the sun? 

What whispers 
Of penitent meek lispers 
Steal to your far confessional like the sigh of a dove- eyed 
nun? 



Low bells 
Now twinkle through the sky like stars from dimpled 
wells. 

Fair white-winged maidens stand 
Who fling the trailing gauze of their torches wide 
O'er the delicate fern-like limbs of a virgin land, 
Of an innocent dreaming bride. 
O, unkissed cheek of a moon that the pillows of spaces 
hide! 
O golden tresses of autumn leaves outspread ! 
O spicy breeze that sighs from a maiden heart, 
They smile as they beckon a strange white prince to part 
The foaming lace of thy bed. 



Dear patient bride of Time, 
For thee the unborn planets dream they chime; 

As Orphic melody 
That floats upon an unsuspected harmony; 

As a babe's eye uncloses 
In wonder at a waving mystery of clustered roses; 



172 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

As if sighs 
Of sense first won in losing Paradise ! 

As if stars 
With hearts were throbbing, 
As if silver bars 
In quivering minor melody of love were sobbing, 
So the curve 
Where white ships swerve 
Sweeps with a tremulous moon-edged kiss to the lips of 
a naked nerve; 
And startled miles 
Dreaming of love's strange smiles 
With a shiver twang the emerald harp of their thousand 
isles; — 
And bridal torches burn 

Like eyes 
O'er jewelled lawns of skies 
Where laughing angels dance as light as the tiptoe dew 
on a fern. 

O dance as light 
As a fawn, sweet night ! 
And let the starlight bring 
The echo of the melody you sing. 

The liquid metre 

Of wind-swept pearl 
Where cloud-nymphs bathe 
In an upland tarn 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 173 

Is clear as the ripple 

Of nights that swathe 
The rounded limbs 

Of a white moon-girl. 

Sweet as the twitter 
Of Pleiad swallows 
That build gold nests 
In the purple eaves, 
The placid hours 

With dove-like breasts 
Their love are cooing 
In dark cool hollows. 

And nebulous milk 

Of blue-veined skies 
That feeds twin orbs 
In the lap of dawn 
Is pure as the fire 

The soul absorbs 
From the love-lit font 
Of the virgin's eyes. 

Ah, hero, drink thy fill 
Of the fiery breath of God's will ! 
Upon thine ears 
Converge 
Through whispering galleries of the years 
The murmurs of the surge 



174 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Where swooning lipless voices 
Clamor for rebirth. 
Like a waked god rejoices 
This captain of yon caravel of earth. 
He leaps upon the rainbow bridge of hope, and scans far 
seas 
Through star-lensed mysteries. 
No spirit realm 
Is stranger to his helm. 
The peal 
Of his trumpet cry 
Cuts like a keel 
Upon Eternity. 

Bring scarlet lilies 

That wander breathless 
O'er Martian meadows 
In fluted fire ! 
And kneel in the hush 
Of Lunar shadows; 
And spin gold crowns 

For a hero deathless ! 

Where leaping shuttles 
Of meteors pattern 

The pale brocade 
Of the astral film 
Now tangle his hair 

With diamond braid, 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 175 

And twine his fingers 



With rings of Saturn 



And soft as feathers 
Of suns that hover 
O'er milky waters 
Where star-maids hide, 
Now bare your bosoms, 

Uranian daughters. 
To pillow the brow 

Of your sleeping lover! 

So shall we set him on a polar throne, 
And lay his hand upon earth's loosened zone. — 
O bliss 
Of a martyr's wedding-kiss! 
Hath not each Christ who whispers down the years 
Seen triumph blurred through halo-crowns of tears? 
As if a truth-swept burning glass should melt 
With the concentrated agony it felt? 
O agony of tears, now blessed as wine ! 
Immortals drink thee with a sob divine. 
And Bodhisattwa, clad with tainted flesh, 
Crowned with the sting of blood-warm sins that mesh 
Their diamond-hearted wills, o'ertop the world. 
Like unseen germs in pulp of fruit-cells curled 
Their thoughts swell rooted in the brains of kings. 
The very heavens are stirring with their wings 
Of rosy-hued idea. The Easts and Wests 



176 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Are held in their two hands; and on their breasts 
Lie child-eyed prophecies of faiths and creeds; 
And new-born worlds are twined like crystal symphonies 
of beads. 

Ah, play on the sorted reeds 
Of plaintive years that slip 

Like yearning beads 
Of deep unutterable prayer 

From a holy lip ! 
And dance 

O'er crystal slabs of air 
As light as the gossamer trip 

Of million-footed Chance ! 

Come, play on the flutes 
Of tempered eons ! 
Come, dance on the pebbles 
Of time-worn suns ! 
Let young moons pipe 

With their silver trebles ! 
Let comets prance 

To the earth's proud paeans! 

Shoot hymns of lightning, 
O maids with torches. 
Through unploughed tracks 
Where the planets race ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 177 

Bow down, ye Lords 

Of the Zodiacs, 
While thunder rolls 

Through your pillared porches ! 

To the silken tent 

The bridegroom flashes 
As a star-kiss throbs 
In the earth's warm breath. 
Now close it with curtains 

Of silver sobs; 
And pin it with diamonds 

That slip from your lashes ! — 

O sweet veiled virgin land that lies like a leaf 

In the cup of the seas, in the lap of the drifting 
skies, 
Drink softly thy draught of dreams, for the night is 
brief. 
For the cool still touch of the morn on thy shoulder 
lies! 
Lay bare the bud-like founts of thy bridal grief ! 
Like a widowed nun with tears thou shalt wash the 
pearls of thine eyes. 

As a tragedy leaps from its germ of deed, when a star 

Is born of the clash of suns in a fate-swept path. 
So souls like steeds are spurred by the gilded car 



178 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

To the plunging doom of their death, or in foaming 
wrath 
Are whirled by the charioteer in a circle far 
Down haggard face-browed lanes of a hero's after- 
math. — 

Must the liquid metre break 

On a storm-swept lake ? 
And mar with its wailing bitter 
The Pleiads' placid twitter? 
Shall not the hero's diamond-hearted will 
O'ertop all ill? 
Then let the piping eons 
Dance to the earth's proud paeans! 
For if in trailing tunes 
Heaven shall vibrate to the pang of new-born moons, 
If discord only strengthens 
The Titan-hearted harmony it lengthens, 
Shall not these blood-notes quiver 
As if a million ruby blossoms floated on a tranquil river? 

As if some new melodic sense 

Were born of senses; 
As if the sun-burst of omniscience 
Were shot from the seven-hued ray that a crystal soul 
condenses; 

So an immortal ear 
The pure white truth shall hear 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. Y19 

As if it filtered through a soundless, formless, stainless 
atmosphere. 

How can it race 
O'er broken strings of place, 
For everywhere is omnipresent in one burning focal point 
of space? 

How can it rhyme 
O'er rhythmic lapse of time, 
For God hath swept etherial pulses into one limpid lake 

of love sublime? 
As bubbling springs where tear-eyed nymphs have rule. 
The soul wells up with insight clear and cool. 
Each diamond-hearted brother 
Shoots rays into another; 
And all things lie about on one another's breast like lotus 
petals in a pool. 



So the pure motive of the bridegroom speeds 
As if an opal bird had dropped to an emerald nest of 
reeds. 



But what if he bear the sting 
Of a mortal thing, 
And bind with the silken chain of a self the bride's 

unconscious wing? 
What if he stain with a tear the virgin lace of her 

bed? — 



180 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Ah, Psyche, thy bed is the vast white ocean of human 
suffering; 

And his the awful kiss of a soul with its own true free- 
dom wed ! 



When out of the calm cool gray of the primal night 
God's thoughts, breathed light. 

Like clouds on the pearly wing of the morning flew. 
No sense-refracted ray. 

No tear-stained dream of a separate self they knew. 
Like babes they lay. 

Or folded petals asleep in the soft white arms of a dew. 

As tender flocks of tune 
Carol upon symphonic interludes of glee; 
As if a single dimpled moon 
Showered a million diamond kisses on the crescents of 
the sea; 

So in a nesting mood 
Shall selfless spirits brood. 
Cooing to one another in the ecstasy of dove-like 
brotherhood. 

To stand upon the brink ! 
In crystal depths to sink 
Where saints in clear community of purpose think ! 
Not as a mere drop lost; 
But as a new note tossed 
Into the overwhelming organ-floods of Pentecost ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 181 

O white baptismal font of impersonal fire ! 
We dip in thee 
Our helpless naked individuality, 
And fling our separate beaded wills like pearls on a 
funeral pyre ! 



He who seeks 
Shall find; — 
Whether on mountain peaks, 
Or in the desert wind; 
Whether with white dumb hands he shrieks 
To the future deaf and blind; 
Whether on wasted knee bespeaks 
The lonely God of his mind. 



But where shall the soul aghast 
Woo its true self in fierce immortal agony of passion? 
Upon what deserts of the haggard crowd, in what gray 
garb of penitential fashion 
Shall it invoke the purity of its long-forgotten past? 



Bathed in the sweet virginity 
Of this young land that rises like a shell-nymph from 
the sea 
Behold, O man, the perfect crisis of thy opportunity ! 
By bitter balm of conflict purified. 
Alone shalt thou be worthy of thy starry bride. 



182 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Not as the lawless denizen of Greed; 
But as the loving citizen self-freed 
Pouring his life-stream into the ocean of the common 
need. 
O fertile prophecies that laugh on a wedding morn ! 
O dispensation newly born ! 
For thee the systems waited, for thee the planets 
floated 

Like smoke-wreaths ruby-noted 
From the molten core of Time outblown through the 
lips of his silver horn. 



If on wing of melody 
The past reborn came flying; 
If in burst of prophecy 
The future sang its heart out in one note, like a skylark 
dying; 

And if the sweet-lipped themes 
Of these twin sister streams 
Were pressed into the single rosy petal of an angel's 
dreams; — 

Then the whole fronded world 
Into this downy seedling moment furled 
Would sing to itself, like God before one gossamer 
-thought uncurled. 

So, night without a parallel, 
Sing on, sing well. 
As with the bursting heart of Nature prisoned in thy 
sapphire shell ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 183 

As if the very blisses of the bride 
Were charged with all the motherhood of ages to be 
crucified ! 

As if the bridegroom heard 
The pinion of a Dove 
Whirring amid the boundless transports of his love, 
And brooding with the very impregnation of the Primal 
Word! 



O bridal night 
Veiled in thy spirit robe of white ! 

O panting wave 
Of sea-green goddess in a glassy cave ! 
O sky atune ! 
O perfect-breasted moon 
Cold with the splendor of a marble slave ! 
O braided stars upon the brow of Dawn ! 
And Pleiads' nests 
Under the purple Wests ! 
And dove-eyed Lyra brooding on the lawn 1 
And thy keen sword, Orion ! 
And thou, O sun-tamed Lion ! 
And thou, again, great polar heart 
That pinn'st the winged universe's spiral chart !- 
All ye, and millions more 
That teem in violet life upon the farthest astral shore 
Whirr up in one transcendent blast of wings; 
And fill the jasmine melody that swings 



184 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

From the pale yellow of magnetic stems, 
And flings the cup-like magic of its hems 
O'er the soft naked wilderness of things! — 
Now in one last ecstatic canticle, ye moments, blend, 
That mote-like rush upon the flaming end; 
One perfect note of wedding bells to rise and sink 
Upon the drum-like brink 
Of steel-blue corded hemispheres, 
Where now the mortal signal of the years 
Is sounded for the fainting, dying world in elegies of 
tears ! 



FOURTH MOVEMENT. 

Hark ! From afar elemental voices prophesying ! 
Hist ! 'T is the tune of the sirens of the deep ! 
Mark where yon star to an altar-flame is magnifying ! 
List to the moon like a sibyl in her sleep ! 
Hark through the mist, 
List 
For a shiver like a wind upon a glassy river ! 
List through the dark, 
Hark 
For a rattle like the omen of a coming battle ! 
Mark 
Where the spark 
Of a trumpet like a lark 
Cuts against the dawny flashing of the dark ! 
List 
While the murmur of the mist 
Dies away; — 
Dies away in the sobbing of the spray, 
Of the spray of silver falling on a pool of amethyst ! 
185 



186 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Who waits 
With calm white bosom veiled beyond the gates, 

Where long cool chords of braided sleep 
Trail with their stifled dooms upon the deep? 

A breathless hush of wonder 
Listens for avalanches of the muffled thunder. 
Some blood-stained conqueror kneels awhile to weep. 

"Sleep, midnight pure. 
I hang this harp, my heart, within the spiral void of 
thy delay. 
The ministrel of the dawn is sure. 

'T is sweet to pray. 
How often have I prayed the night away, 
Slipping on keels of eager glances into the silent onset 
of the gray ! 

" How calm to velvet lips the moonlight nestles, 
As if a Lilliputian fleet of silver vessels 
Were spreading nautilus sails to mermaids' breath ! 
How the hushed drowsy zephyr dreams, and listens 
To catch the beaded sleep that on the fringe of mid- 
night glistens ! 
And the whole sea is pulseless with the poppy-ecstasy of 
death ! — 

" But what is it glares and swirls with a trumpet-clarion 
plume from the helmeted vortex of space? " 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 187 

" Naught but the breaking moon on the mast ! " 
"A blinding golden Christ out-burst like a furnace- 
bloom from the womb of yon rifted place ! 
Didst thou not see? " 
" Only the swerve of a prow that ploughs to the furrowy 
edge of the vast; 

A shadow that wings to the lee ! " 



Hark ! From afar elemental whispers penetrating ! 

Hist ! 'T is the croon of the yearning of the sea ! 
Mark where yon star with a diamond kiss is scintillating ! 

List to the moon like a mermaid in the lee ! 



" O wild suspense ! 
O spasm of ecstasy intense ! 
O agonizing moment like a knife ! 
Was it the mortal steel-keen edge of an earthly light? 
Was it? — I'd give my life 
Did it not curse with the mocking glare of a hell- 
born sprite ! " 
"Nay; it could be but the blade-like hair of the 
moon out-streaming." 

"O cruel, cruel dreaming! 

" 'T is now the very breathless dead of the night. 
The moon hath set in the track 
Of a winged goblin black. 



188 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

The breeze is light. 

No sound to trouble 
The ear, but a silver bubble, 
A rounded hope that breaks 

In hollow aches ! — 



" But what is it puffs like a swift pale passionate lip in 
the half-furled sail on the great cross-tree?" 
Hark! 'T is the prayer of an altar-flame afloat! 
"O Christ-like voice of a Judgment lightning-bell that 
shook wild orbs from the heart of the sea ! " 
" 'T is a star! " — " 'T is a light afloat like a tossing 
boat! 
It flickers as fire-flies weave their ominous golden gleams 
with the braided grasses ! " — 

" Steady ! — It glimmers ! — It passes 
As if like a luminous snake it glided through trees that 
shrank on a distant shore ! " — 

" Blank heaven ! 'T is drowned once more ! — 
Again it lives ! — It swims ! — It swerves like a lantern 
that waves on a strand ! — 

O bursting prophecy of the ages grand ! 
It thrills to my soul ! It throbs like a living flame in 
my hand ! — 

'T is land! 'T is land! — 

" O star of salvation ! O blessed exhalation ! 
O ecstasy boundless ! O frenzy of forces ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 189 

'T is the flame of the land ! Let its fierce exultation 
Prance up through the blood like a legion of 
horses ! 
Come, leap from your slumber, ye argonauts splendid ! 
To your knees on the deck! On your wings to 
the shrouds ! 
Burn rockets of triumph for martyrdoms ended ! 
And waft your white prayers like a dove to the 
clouds ! 



"The heavens are melting; — they swoon in their 
gladness. 
The womb of great Nature is bursting with blisses ! 
O helmsman, thou Anak, stand firm through thy mad- 
ness ! 
O comrades, embrace me, I pant for your kisses ! 
Flash lights to the Niiia ! Shout horns to the Pinta ! 

Martin Alonzo ! immortals together 

We have shared the cold scorn, we have dared the 
dark winter. 

1 crown thee, my brother, with stars of spring weather ! 



" The past is forgotten. A truce to all rancor ! 

I bless ye, dear children, who weep as ye kneel. — 
Now leap to the windlass ! Uncoil the great anchor ! 

Stanch hopes of the dawn, how ye throb through the 
keel! 



190 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Here are crowns for our toil ! Here is balm for all 
doubting ! 
'T was the Virgin who flew with Her wings on our 
masts ! 
I hear the far blessing of cherubim shouting. 

Let them shake the thin walls of the sky with their 
blasts ! " 



O blast of disruption triumphant ! O wail of the travail 

of ages ! 
O shudder and shamble of planets a-tremble with doom 

as it rumbles ! 
Cold dews of the new are upon thee ; the curse of the 

blood of the sages ! 
The world splits apart with a crash, and the dome of the 

elements tumbles ! 
And onsets of steeded archangels have torn up the tents 

of old orders ! 
And pillars of nations dissolve in the breath of the ram- 
pant marauders ! 
And quakings have swallowed the sun ! And the core of 

the universe crumbles ! 



And curses, like shrieks of a Dawn when typhoons from 

their ambush of Caliban lair 
Have streaked a black clutch of demoniac claw through 

the pale shredded gold of her hair, 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 191 

And, tearing pearl mantles to tatters, have snatched the 

nude pink of the manacled nymph, 
And stifled the sobs of her swoon in the drowning sea- 
bloods of her own native lymph ; — 
So curses of dark swollen crisis outburst counter-blasts 

to the challenge of morn. 
So paeans of triumph swept back in a curdled recoil 

through the jaws of her horn. 
And impotent engines of time fanned the terrified air with 

recalcitrant wing, 
Like daring black plumes of a crow crested back by the 

hurricane hails of a Spring. — 
Till, shot from the uttermost angle of space, blazed the 

rocket-like star of the Master ; 
And legions of light through the infinite corn-fields of suns 

leaping faster and faster 
Swept down through the shaft of the visible void with the 

crash of triumphant disaster ! — 
And though worlds lay in stratified wreck on the beaches 

of systems, and perilous sheens 
Of the crystalline levels of sprays spurted o'er the thin 

hulls of these Spanish marines, 
Yet the hymn of the purpose of God, pulsing bliss through 

their hearts like a balm, was as oil 
On this turbulent tide of their fate, and set finger of calm 

on the hps of turmoil. — 
And the black ruffled plumes of the morn settled back on 

her pearly soft neck all a-quiver. — 
And something sailed out from the rim of the sea like the 
ghost of a swan on a river. — 



192 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

O hark to the hiss of yon spark, as it cuts with a Damas- 
cene kiss to the dome of the dark ! 
O Hst to the treacherous tune of the sirens that swim to 
the mystical whim of the moon ! 
O wait at the gate of the gray ! 
O kneel as ye reel to the sibilant sobbing of spray ! 
O wait in the tryst of the cool amethyst for the recreant 
maiden of day ! 

But hark ! 't is a horn ! 
But Hst to the chant of the dawn ! 
There is thrill, there is whisper of morn ! 
The unseen Conqueror whirls his skirmish of lancers afar 
on the lawn ! 



Hark, from afar to the jubilee reverberating ! 

Hist ! 'T is the tune of the dancers of the sky ! 
Mark where yon star like a pillared flame is coruscating ! 
List while the croon of the eons flutters by ! 
Pause as ye kneel. 
Feel 
For the fingers of a sympathetic past that lingers ! 
Kneel, and beseech. 
Reach 
For the tresses of a future's virginal caresses ! 
Reach 
Till the passion of your speech 
Dies away on far horizons like a tide upon a beach ! 
Kneel 
With a sacrament's appeal 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 193 

While the will of the Supreme 
Lifts the planet-folded curtain from the secret of His 

dream ; 
Wakes the consecrated ages with the breaking of His seal ! 



" O morning of glory ! O wonderful story ! 

We shall see the gold roofs where the sunlight is 
gleaming ! " — 
List ! 'T is the doom of an ominous delay ! — 
" Nay, flames of the land in their joy transitory 
Shall melt in realities sweeter than dreaming." — 
Hark ! 'T is the gloom of a wing upon the gray ! — 
" Vast temples like palms shall o'ertop the blue moun- 
tains. 
Fair maidens shall kneel on the beeches like wil- 
lows."— 
Hist ! 'T is the spume of the sirens in the bay ! — 
" And sages like gods shall recline where cool fountains 
Fling down their gold braids to the breasts of the 
billows." — 
Mark ! 't is the plume of the demon of the spray ! — 

" O tense expectation ! " 
Now, heave once again with thy travail, vast womb of the 
Earth ! 
" O dawn of salvation ! " 
Thine offspring, the Sun, hath awakened. He bums to 
the birth ! 



194 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

" O dance through my blood ! " 
The legions of vapors have snatched him, and wrapped 
him in fire ! 
"Shout flames to the flood ! " 
He reigns like a God on the throne of their hottest 
desire ! 

Parched by his sovereign blast 
The siren of the sea-mist breaks 
Her tangled coils in lingering golden flakes 
That swirl in dimming breath athwart the pennon on the 
mast. 
The stranger Tritons lean in gaping crowds, 
Hanging on bowsprits, flocking like nesting gulls among 
the shrouds, 
Peering in breathless wonder through 
For emerald sheens to streak the mottled marquetry 
of blue. 

"Dost see it?" "No, 
*T was but the lazy turtle of a cloud-bank low 

Pawing the murky tide." — 
" There ! in yon purple whale that looms his verge 

Upon the starboard side ! " 
" Can you not hear the muffled gulping of the surge, 

As if some slimy passion monster-lipped 
Over the naked bosom of a sandbar shpped? " — 
" Hush ! for the yeoman sun now ploughs 
His yoked quadruple team 
Where winged flocks upon the steaming upland 
browse ! " — 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 195 

" O jewelled gleam 
Of diamond lace that droops upon a throbbing rosy 
neck ! " 

" Look where the braided fleck 
Of foaming breath in spangles 
Leaps like a toying hand that tangles 
The fringe of palmy hair upon the reefs ! " 
" Now, — now 
The curtain lifts, — and lifts ! " 
" We shall behold, perchance, the beethng brow 
Of snowland drifts ! " 
" O thrills ! " " O joys ! " — " O griefs ! 
'T is but a desert wilderness of level staring greens ! " 
" There are no crystal sheens. 
Or azure-skirted clouds of inland peaks ! 
Only a few familiar creeks 
That loll with listless arm against the drowsy bosom of 
the land ! " — 
"Yet is it God's own strand ! 
Crescents of solid blessing bounding this slippery salt 
abyss ! 
O, I could fling a million-winged kiss 
To every Hsping leaf that croons in the lap of yon 
palms ! 
Ye crested doves of calms ! " — 

" Away ! below ! away ! 
Don proudest daintiest array 
To grace this first glad Christian holiday, 
This first mad feast 
Drunk with the plighted East ! " 



196 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

" Quick float 
The passion- breasted curve of each eager boat ! " 

" Stand, and be wrapped in 
The imperial flag of thy monarchs, Captain ! 
Sailors, salute again 
This first vice-regal reign ! 
Behold your Cosmos-conqueror, the vested Admiral of 
Spain ! " 

O blessed astronomer ! 
Who, fired with hope, 
Point'st the spear-gathering eye of thy telescope 
To some miscalculated altitude of dark ; 

Where yet thine eye shall mark 
An unexpected new-waked planet stir 
Upon a stranger arc ; — 
Now, thou, O Neptune's priest ! 
Whose blood-drawn charts like pohshed lenses magnify 
Thine altars of the East ; 
Though thy swift prow may fly 
Straight through the vast impossible as an arrow-beam of 

light, 
Yet hast thou struck a dark unreckoned orb that bars thy 
flight. 
The very failure of thy bitter shame 
Shall lend a starry splendor to thy name ! 

Now, streaking through the tide 
As avalanches slide 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 197 

Down the blue-green enamel of the hills, 

Each petrel shallop thrills 
To blooded brawn that sledges at the tholes ; 

And hps of parching souls 
Suck the warm greens of fancy's tender juices. 

Up through the palm-fringed sluices 
Where amorous Atlantic pouts his melting moath 
Steeped in the spicy ardors of the South 

Against twin coral lips, 
Where the warrn-blooded island sips 
The trembling passion of his lazy swoons 
Through the hot fanning of the naked noons, 
The helmsmen steer. 
The Hquid languor of the atmosphere 
Adopts them, laps them to the milky softness of its bosom. 

They see white cups of liUes blossom 
Their brimming hearts away in odor of a lotus dream. 

Where now a clear cool stream 
Sifts through its crystal hair the golden minnows of the sand, 
They beach upon the land. 



Gliding through the palm leaves, 

Crouching 'neath the grasses, 
Where the liquid calm leaves 
Shadow as it passes. 
Flash of raven tresses ! 
Chestnut nakednesses ! 
Vain the guesses. 
Be they forest lads or lasses. 



198 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

No Paynims, these ; 
Or polished ivory Chinese ; 
Nor Ethiopian imps 
Scanned through the snake-Hke glimpse 
Of Afric's murky river ! 
Crested with butterfly plume, and a rainbow-winged 
quiver, 
And smeared with melting drops of golden rings, — 
a prize 
For salt- encrusted eyes, — 
A leopard-lithe and cypress-stalwart chief 
Breaks from his covert tawninesses of banana leaf ; 

And, with the timid bronzes of his train. 
Prostrates himself before these white immortals of the 
main. — 
Two cherished streams from primal human fount. 
Parted by some far prehistoric mount. 
To flow in one another on forever 
One double-tinted river 
From this first moment of fraternal years ! — 
Now doth the Admiral, prince among his peers, 
Flash to the cloudland shore amid the crimsons of Olym- 
pian splendor ; 
As when the sun alights with glances tender 
Upon the purple passion-world of skied Acropolis. 
And from the radiate prows they leap, as canopies 
Of jewelled clouds to tent their monarch's glory. — 
Up from the glooms of Aryan shadows hoary 
They flock like gilded cormorants, and swoop 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 199 

Upon the eel-like shore. A steel-winged troop 
Of God's avengers, sword in hand, they swirl. 

Above their viking heads embroidered battle-flags 
unfurl. 
And hymns swell fan-like from the templed sod 
To bless the Mother of these gods' own God. 
Then doth Columbus kneel, and lave his face 

In the warm billowy bosom of the bridal sands. 
And stately are the loyal words that grace 
Their twin-locked monarchs' memory. He stands 
One instant, like a king that grasps all space : — 
Then walks in silence down the savage shore. 
And time flows on as placid as before. 

Ah, hero ! hast thou felt 

A shadow of the darkness like a belt 

Folding thee close ? And wilt thou press it down 

Upon thy forehead, like a thorny crown? 

And dost thou sense the martyred blood-drops 

trickle. 
Thou fruiting ripeness for the Reaper's sickle ? 



O what is it lurks in the heart of the diamond atoms of 
time, like a pestilent poison brewing? 
Hark ! 'T is the undertone of demons as they mock ! 
What querulous scud of an ominous storm through the 
creaking portals of purpose is whining and mewing ? 



200 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Hist ! 'T is the wings of the elemental flock ! 
List ! 'T is the whetting of their swords upon the rock ! 
O blast of disruption, O jealousy pale, now the skeleton 
lair of thine ultimate evil unlock ! 

O shriek of defiance, of hate that endangers thin bonds 

of the continents double ; 
Defiant despair with its gathering charges of blackness, as 

hurricanes bubble 
From founts of the glacial granite, and grimly annihilate 

time with their trouble ! 
Now hark to the hiss of this garrulous crew the swift doom 

of their madness pursuing ! — 
" Yes, press us, ye tyrants of gods, if ye dare ! We Ve 

enough of your secret undoing. 
Have you thrown us as hostage these wretches of Span- 
iards to torture and crush in our maw, 
As once long ago you were forced to surrender your 

crucified King of the Law ? 
This world is our own ; and no hint of its wealth shall go 

back with your robbers to Spain. 
We Titans, and dragons, and gorgons, and vultures, and 

slimy green crabs of the main, 
We send you a bat for our herald to parley! Quick, yield 

to our right, or be slain ! " 

O crests of the morning ! O blades of the gloaming ! 
O knights of the splendor ! O Lords of Creation ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, 201 

The nebulous squadrons of chargers are foaming ; 

And legions wheel out from each far constellation. 
The blood of the martyred lends spur to their valor. 

No Paladins strong as the Christs who have died ! 
O tremble, ye myrmidon braggarts of pallor, 

And kiss the steel glove of the God ye defied ! 



Now, hurled like a hurricane hand when it reaches wild 

grasp for the zenith of noons, 
Then combing like tides thunders down on the world with 

the snarl of embattled typhoons. 
Mid crests of sea-horses that spume to Cimmerian skies 

their hoar ices of sprays. 
Or, sucked to the depths of maelstroms, gulp down the 

rich boil of Tellurian blaze ; — 
So swung the sheen-crescents of Michael that swept with 

bent tails to the uttermost stars ; 
So legions of lightning split opulent space with their crests 

of beatified Mars ; 
And flung the dread weight of Olympian wills on the chat- 
tering hordes of the devils ! — 
O fierce coruscations of ranks superposed, gold on gold, 

flaming levels on levels 
Over stratified crests of the steeled chevaliers their auroras 

of spectral dishevels ! — 
As they mount where the hoofs of victorious steeds thunder 

sparks from the flint of their helms, 
As they mount, as they mount like the scaling of tides to 

the rims of Cyclopean realms, 



202 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

Where the fumes of their manes sweep away with the 

silver of scud to the swash of the skies ; — 
Now damn with the vengeance of dominant doom, and 

the quench of the blood in your cries 
Those green crumpled lights of a serpentine gloom in the 

hollows of impotent eyes ; — 
Till, chained in some vast subterranean tomb where En- 

celadus scoffs at their sighs, 
He shall stifle with curds of crude matter their insolent 

wrangle and chatter ; 
Where the dragons that trail with the imps shall be shrunk 

to the crawling of shrimps, 
And inordinate blasts of typhoons lie encaged like limp 

gas in balloons ! 
For the faith of the True in the New is as sure as the God 

in the blue ; 
And the seeds of corruption breed cold in the gangrenous 

limbs of the old. 
And though heroes be butchered by scores, and their 

bodies be sown to the mould. 
Yet the blood of the Christs silvers up in the lihes of 

Easter, and gold 
Streaks the eve of Gethsemane's sweat with the splendors 

of purpose untold ! 

O hark, 

From afar ! 
'T is a lark ! 

'T is a star ! 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 203 

'T is the star of salvation that rides like a king through the 
triumphal arches of noon with the sun in his car ! 

But list 

To the tune 
Of the mist 
In a swoon, 
As it hooks its bent horns with the stratified islands of 
palms like the floating white wraith of a mariner- 
moon ! 

But kneel 

Where they reach 
Like a keel 
On a beach, 
As they plant a strange foot at the root of a cactus that 
weeps bloody blossoms too heavenly fragrant for 
speech ! 

O sing 

With the hymn ! 
As a wing 
Let it swim 
In a curving blue wake through the dissonant billows of 
space to the Virgin enthroned with her pink cher- 
ubim ! 

O hark ! O hark ! O pray. 
Ye dear warm lingering faiths of a dying day ! 



204 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 

O day unparalleled on couch of rosy feathers dying, 
Thy elemental voices still are prophesying. 
Still shall the tuneful sirens of the deep 
Drag thy triumphal car that rides sublime 
Over the irridescent waves of Time 
To where new curtained continents fore'er recede, and 
sleep. 

O hark ! O hark ! 
Over the globing oceans shde thy last immensities of arc. — 
Now hath thy true astronomer and priest 
Reached o'er the darkling bar with free-built arch 
Where we shall see his grander purpose march 
Round flaming inward altars to the crystal-hearted East. 

His triumph is not bounded 
By the vast bustle of this world of stepping-stones he 
founded ; 
But by the consummation of his plan 
To weave all creeds 
And teeming blossoms of the rarest human seeds 
To deck the tomb-throned Union of his Monarchy of 
Man ! 



But buzzing croons 
That whizz among the gurgles of bassoons, 
Where curly pearls 
In vortices of whorls 
Scoff like demonic faces in the moons ; 
Or sibilant shimmers 



THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 205 

That hang low branches of their palmy glimmers 

To mummer mimics of the luUabied lagoons ; — 

These still 

Up-spill 

From sulphurous chasms 

The spurting spasms 
Of incorrigible will ; 
Like buzzing flies 
That choose where noonday dries 
The slimy ooze of greening marshes for their minstrelsies ; 
Or crocodiles that snooze with snorting cries, 
Or hissing drag 
Their scaly lengths a-swish among the shivers of sweet flag. 



And is there then no end of stifled woe ? 
We do not know. 
We can but keep the faith 
Even when sucked between the shredded jaws of death ; — 
Even as he, 
The first and last begotten hero of the sea. 
We can but let the twofold music sigh, and die away ; 

As if a maiden's hand 
Led some dark shipwrecked thing along the strand 
Until their voices blended with the evanescent murmur 
of the spray. 

So now all subtlest natures seem 
To melt upon the soft etherial bliss of the Supreme. 
And perfect silence turns the numbered pages of a dying 
theme. 



NOTES. 



"O sweet dead artist and seer." — p. 14. 

Kano Hogai, into whose mouth I put the following summary of 
Eastern life, was the greatest Japanese painter of recent times, a 
genius whose penetration to the heart of early oriental ideals 
seemed like special inspiration. He was for years one of my 
dearest friends, and in Japanese art my most valued teacher. I 
have represented him as the re-incarnate spirit of oriental art. His 
death in 1888 was a national calamity. 

" Where the orange temples of Kasuga shine." — p. 14. 

The ancient city of Nara, the capital of Japan in the eighth cen- 
tury, still glories in a grove of mighty pines and cedars which 
sweep away for a mile to the Eastern mountains, sheltering the 
dainty buildings of the great Shinto temple, Kasiiga. Wild streams 
have torn narrow beds through it. Venerable Buddhist monasteries 
flank it on the north. Archaeologically, Nara is the treasure-house 
of Japan. There in the spring and summer of 1886 I spent with 
Hogai many weeks in delightful study. 

" Which the snow-clad virgins in cloister dim." — p. 15. 

These maidens of Kasiiga are consecrated to the service of the 
gods, and at intervals celebrate the symbolic dance called *' Ka- 
gura." 

" Mid statues of Buddha the meek." — p. 16. 

Hogai first visits the North Indian capital of the Scythian king, 
Kanishka, who about the beginning of the Christian era held the 

207 



208 NOTES. 

first Council of Northern Buddhism, whence the canon was later 
disseminated to Central and Eastern Asia. At this Cashmerian 
centre, in an outburst of creative fervor, the new ideals of a rich 
and profound faith, large enough in its plan to satisfy the spiritual 
needs of a continent, were first adequately externalized in forms of 
Hellenic derivation. Many fine relics of this so-called Greco- 
Buddhist sculpture, including a haughty portrait statue of the Tartar 
Constantine himself, have been excavated, and are mostly preserved 
in the museum at Lahore. 

" The great Vasubandhu to mark." — p. i6. 

Vasubandhu, the greatest follower of Nagarjuna, and one of the 
most important patriarchs in th^ line of esoteric transmission, was 
a man whose extraordinary spiritual and intellectual endowments 
enabled him largely to mould the subsequent course of Northern 
Buddhism, much as St. Paul did that of Christianity. He is the 
author of numerous works which remain to-day a corner-stone of 
Japanese Buddhism. It is not certain whether in old age he was 
present at the Northern Synod; but his spirit was doubtless domi- 
nant in the person of its president, his disciple Vasumitra. A 
portrait statue of Vasubandhu, preserved in Nara, shows us a face 
of enormous power. 

" Now moss like a pall." — p. i6. 

When the Chinese pilgrim Hiouentsang visited these sacred 
seats in the seventh century, he found them already in pitiful ruin. 
The Greco-Buddhist relics which he brought to China became the 
germ of a lofty religious art throughout the Tang Dynasty, and in 
Corea and Japan during the eighth century. A trace of this 
Hellenic quality has never died out in the art of the latter country. 

" Back to thy pious imperial prince." — p. 17. 

Hogai refers to Taitsong the Great, the second Emperor of Tang, 
through whose toleration Buddhism was to make rapid strides; 
and, speaking of himself as one of Kanishka's sculptors, he 
predicts his rebirth as Godoshi (Wutaotse), the greatest religious 
painter of Tang. 



NOTES. 209 

" Gather these Bodhisats, 
And battle-scarred features of grim Arhats." — p. 17. 

These are the titles of two degrees in Buddhist saintship. The 
Arhat, in Northern Buddhism, is one who has attained only sub- 
jective purification by withdrawing from the world. He bears 
marks of the severity of his ascetic discipline. A Bodhisattwa is 
one who, through the passion of divine love for men, has mingled 
with the evil of the world and overcome it, thus winning a leader- 
ship in the overshadowing army of the good. He is represented 
as of beautiful face and heavenly mien. 

"And the masterful heads of Scythian knights." — p. 17. 

These are the four archangels militant, whose statues stand at the 
corner of every ancient altar. They are represented as stamping on 
evil in the form of a distorted imp. There can be little doubt that 
the military costume of these figures in early Chinese and Japanese 
examples is borrowed from the trappings of ancient Scythian 
generals. The finest specimens extant are at Kaidanin of Nara, 
modelled in clay, of life size, and dating from the commencement 
of the eighth century. 

" Blue gods unmoved in everlasting flame." — p. 18. 

The art of the Tang Dynasty became strongest in religious 
painting. Symbolic figures of large size and mystic import were 
painted on the walls of temples in firm outhne and rich color. Of 
these the Bodhisattwa Fudo, whose name signifies " The Unmoved," 
was depicted as blue, and seated in the midst of orange flame. The 
colors, halos, flames, and clouds of such paintings, represent the 
spiritual aura, currents, and conditions generated by. these lofty 
beings. 

"Black bronze in an infinite mould." — p. 18. 

The highest creative power of Northern Buddhistic art was 
reached in early Japanese bronze sculpture, which clothes with 
the dignity and beauty of a Greek reminiscence the noblest sug- 
gestions of superhuman spiritual types. The finest remains are the 



210 NOTES. 

colossal statues in the temple Yakushiji, near Nara, cast in the 
eighth century, of a metal which in color resembles polished ebony. 

" O crystalline flash at the bar of billows." — p. i8. 

Hogai now transfers the scene of his description to China. I 
have chosen from the several periods of Chinese culture that most 
typically artistic one of the later Sung Dynasty, whose idealistic out- 
burst of Buddhist illumination in the twelfth century rendered its 
capital, Hangchow, a birthplace of inspired forms. Marco Polo 
describes the city as he saw it some years later, and we have minute 
contemporary records of it in Chinese poetry and painting. It lay 
a few miles inland, between the Sientang Estuary and the beautiful 
" Western Lake," surrounded by groves and picturesque mountains, 
among whose nooks and crags grew mossy temples and secluded 
villas, where worked the artists, poets, statesmen, and philosophers 
of that golden age. The flavor of its intense life I have attempted 
to suggest in the following passage. 

*' Of soul in the infinite warmth of things." — p. 19. 

The central mood of this Chinese idealism, drawn from the Zen 
(Dhyan), or contemplative sect of Buddhists, was the vital realiza- 
tion of nature as a storehouse of spiritual forms. Not by way of 
cold abstraction, or of a labored symbolism, but as seen in flashes 
of devout insight, did the world become to man a mirror of his own 
soul. Never elsewhere has the passion of faith inspired such a 
profound study of external beauties. It is the well of oriental 
landscape-art. 

" There Love is a law, and the Law is an art." — p. 20. 

Here too the noble Eastern theory of the '* musical " relation of 
human beings to one another in a heaven-ordained spiritual brother- 
hood received for a time its most notable realization. 

"Farewell to the dawn in the meadow." — p. 21. 

Hogai now expressly transfers the picture to his native Japan in 
a lament for its vanishing glory and innocence. I have tried in the 



NOTES. 211 

following pages to realize something of the delicate charm and 
significance of Japanese life and art at their best. Here is a flavor so 
subtle as to elude direct expression. It was the perfect striking of 
an extreme note in the scale of human culture. 

" Leap of the carp." — p. 26. 

Well-known scenes of Japanese out-door life are referred to on 
this page. At the garden of Kameido, near Tokio, a wonderful 
trellis of low-hanging wistaria is thrown across a temple pool 
stocked with fish. The shrine is dedicated to the scholar Michi- 
zane, in whose worship the faithful cow has become a symbol. 

"Basking like kittens in the love of their mothers." — p. 25. 

One who has been admitted to the intimacy of Japanese house- 
holds, regrets the untrustworthiness of some authorities who declare 
this people devoid of family life and affection. 

"Pray to the holy snow-white Queen." — p. 25. 

This is the Bodhisattwa Kuannon, the beautiful female spirit of 
Providential Love, as represented in contemplation on a rock by 
the sea. 

"The Buddha of Infinite Light."— p. 26. 

I refer to Amida. As the central blinding Splendor of the 
universe, he approximates to the Christian conception of God the 
Creator. 



"One priest white-robed who seemed to glide." — p. 27. 

His Reverence the Archbishop Keitoku, of the Tendai sect at 
Miidera temple on Lake Biwa, I still look up to as my most 
inspired and devoutly liberal teacher in matters religious. Precious 
were the days and nights I had the privilege of spending with him 
in the vicinities of Kioto, Nara, and Nikko. He was a lofty living 
exemplar of the spiritual knighthood. He passed from the visible 
form in i88q. 



212 NOTES. 

" Since the days when Kukai hurled 
His dart from the Chinese world." — p. 27. 

Kukai, or Kobo Daishi, one of the three great founders of 
Esoteric Buddhism in Japan, spent many years of his youth in 
study at a famous Chinese monastery. About to return to his 
native country early in the ninth century, he meditated long con- 
cerning the site of his projected temple. Leaving the decision 
to the powers of heaven, he is said to have thrown his vagra^ or 
metal mace, into the air in the direction of Japan, whither it was 
borne by divine means, and lodged in a tall tree on the top of 
Koya mountain. Here after his return it was found by the Daishi, 
and here he built the splendid monastery of Koyasan, which remains 
to this day the patriarchal seat of the Shingon sect in Japan. 

" This for the xvorld, as for Japan." — p. 28. 

The Archbishop Keitoku believed that the Western spirit was 
nearly ripe to receive the lofty doctrine which Eastern guardians 
have preserved for its precious legacy. 

" Expansive self-willed personality." — p. 29. 

It will be perceived that I oppose personality, the self-centred 
and self-originated will of an incarnate man, to individuality, the 
unconscious strength and freedom of an intelligence immersed in 
the divinity of its work. One is peculiar through the abstract 
isolation of subjectivity ; the other is peculiar through the infinite 
fulness of the well of Spirit whence it flows. 

" O self-fed spring of thought." — p. 33. 

The following passage personifies the round of the sciences in 
terms of their characteristic work. Evolved in self-expansion, they 
yet build compensating structures of world-wide toleration. 

" Before the judges of Manwantaras." — p. 34. 

A Manwantara is the immense total period of bloom in a mani- 
fested universe. 



NOTES. 213 

" Holding the poisoned cup to Mongol lips." — p. 35. 

I refer to the opium trade with China. After all, it is the selfish 
expansiveness of commerce, rather than warfare or science, which 
discharges the decreed function of bearing the West back into the 
bosom of the East. It is the last service of the explosive life of 
competition. 

" See in last glimpse how unchecked years condense 
The forces of destruction." — p. 35. 

I conceived the tragic incident of the storming of the Summer 
Palace at Peking to typify the central irony of the situation — the 
knights of the West in blind ignorance smiting the very princess of 
the East whom they were destined to espouse. 

"O spirit of Genghis Khan." — p. 40. 

It should be noted that the excesses of Western custom introduced 
into Tokio society previous to the year 1888 are now rapidly on the 
wane. The picture of contradictions which I witnessed is not over- 
drawn. We may be thankful that the era of confusion is already 
melting away into that of reconstruction. 

" And here come art students with honors." — p. 41. 

For years in a government university, Japanese artists were taught 
the technique of Western painting, sculpture, and architecture by 
European professors. For the time, native " barbarian " arts were 
despised and neglected. The absurdities of the hybrid system of 
teaching drawing in Japanese public schools cannot be exaggerated. 
But these are now things of the past. 

" And Roshi who looks at the cracks 
On terrapins' backs." — p. 41. 

Roshi (the Japanese pronunciation of Laotse) was the Plato of 
China, whose idealistic system later Taoist followers have reduced 
to a species of divination and magic. 



214 NOTES. 

"Why, they blush as they think of the foxes." — p. 41. 

Foxes in Japan were believed to be at times the incarnation of 
mischievous elemental spirits. 

" Let thy heel with diamond lightning 
Blast the eyelids of the Beast." — p. 52. 

Here I refer to the forms of the archangels mentioned in a pre- 
vious note. The vagra, or mace, also spoken of, has its Chinese 
name sometimes translated by the word " diamond." Here the 
diamond, in its hardness and concentration of ray, may symbolically 
express the spiritual potency of the instrument. 

"THE WOOD DOVE."— p. 81. 

The refrain of this poem attempts to render the peculiar pathetic 
rhythm of the oriental wood dove's note, which breaks off at last in 
the midst of a measure. 



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